Diana Krall & BBC Concert Orchestra

Foto: Diana Krall_Rechte WDR, Lutz Voigtländer.

Live At The Mermaid, London - 2004

Diana Krall/BBCCO

Mermaid Theatre, London
Adam Sweeting 
The Guardian, Monday 19 April 2004 10.48 BST 
Article history

This performance by Diana Krall was a recording for Radio 2, with Krall's usual backing trio augmented by the BBC Concert Orchestra. The orchestral players seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time sitting on their hands; they might have been used more fully, since their contributions allowed the singer to go travelling in regions otherwise inaccessible. In Love Letters, sleek, floating strings simmered teasingly underneath Krall's restrained vocal. Krall reckons her version of I've Got You Under My Skin was inspired by the album Sinatra at the Sands, but here the song was transformed into a succulent quasi-samba, with a rippling piano interlude from the singer. For Let's Face the Music and Dance, the orchestra again slid into languid Latin mode while Krall waxed honky-tonkish at the keyboard. 

You could see why Krall would want to exploit her trio as fully as possible, since each of them is a virtuoso in his own right. ("I'm in the audience too, it's pretty great for me," she observed.) More prosaically, it must cost her a fortune to take this lot on tour. At the drums, Peter Erskine brought solidity adorned with fine technical detail, while bassist Christian McBride could turn on a dime between minimal atmospherics and thumping boogie-woogie. On guitar, the Seinfeld-ish Anthony Wilson ran the stylistic gamut from BB King to Bill Frisell. Among many highlights were the sustained, woozy high notes he squeezed out as Krall brought the Tom Waits song Temptation coasting to a halt. 

If anything, the band could do with a sprinkling of human error in the mixture - though it's difficult to imagine what kind of music might stretch them to anywhere near breaking point. They played with exquisite tact on Krall's version of husband Elvis Costello's Almost Blue, brought a raw bluesy edge to Mose Allison's Stop This World and finally worked up a sweat on the rumbustious Love Me Like a Man. Wonder how it'll sound on radio. 

· Broadcast on Radio 2 on May 7.

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