We took ourselves off to London late yesterday, me and WotN, and headed for the Royal Albert Hall where Diana Krall was performing. Being a longtime fan, with half a dozen of her albums in my jazz collection, I was much looking forward to it, and for me - though not for Adèle - it would also be the first time I was in the Royal Albert Hall.
The gig confirmed me in the view that Krall is the real deal. It was a great couple of hours. She sang Fats Waller, she sang Tom Waits, she sang Bob Dylan; she sang 'On the Sunny Side of the Street', 'What'll I Do', and 'Runnin' Wild' (in which Stuart Duncan did the business on fiddle, as indeed he had been doing all evening). It was a rich and varied programme, in which she sang wistful and sultry and hot, and played every kind of backing piano she needed, with aplomb. The highlight for me was the penultimate number before the encore, 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams'. It used to be sung by Nat King Cole, and Krall is in that class. The Albert Hall just loved it, and so did we.
