Diana Krall: Live in Paris (2004) – DVD Review

Film:
DVD:

Starring: Diana Krall (piano, vocals), John Clayton (acoustic bass), Paulinho DaCosta (percussion), Jeff Hamilton (drums), John Pisano (acoustic guitar), Anthony Wilson (guitar), Alan Broadbent (musical director, conductor), Claus Ogerman (guest conductor), and the members of the Orchestre Symphonique Europeen and Paris Jazz Big Band

Features:

• Bonus Music Videos: “The Look of Love” & “Let’s Face the Music & Dance”
• Exclusive Rehearsal Footage

Released by: Pioneer.
Rating: NR (suitable for all audiences)
Region: 1
Anamorphic: Yes.

My Advice: Own it…even if you aren’t a fan of jazz

[ad#longpost]Diana Krall has one of those voices that is like a pat of butter sitting atop a nice hot piece of bread; the more you listen to it, the more it oozes over you and sinks deeper and deeper. Her band is composed of some of the finest jazz musicians in the business today. They know how to frame and support her voice with absolute perfection. Not only that, but when you add a complete symphonic orchestra behind them and you’ve got the aural equivalent of a nice cuppa sitting next to a slice of cheesecake. With a pricey cigar to follow it.

Like any good jazz musician worth his or her salt, she doesn’t just stick to her own original material. Oh no. She plays her own arrangements of the classic jazz numbers that inspired her and she knows her stuff. Her arrangements are impeccible.

This DVD does not have a lot in the way of bonus material, but I’m going to break protocol from our typical Needcoffee guidelines and talk about the audio track for just a second. I’m not a real techno-head. Most of the time, I could care less what encoding process the DVD features, just as long as its surround sound and sounds good. So, let me say that this DVD sounds amazing. The DVD cover tauts this accomplishment as DTS Digital Surround Sound. All I know is that when I’m sitting in my living room and this DVD is playing, I’m absolutely emmersed in the elegant sounds of Krall and her band. It’s just a thing of beauty.

The other features of the disc are a couple of her music videos. These are songs that you can hear as part of the concert video, but these are studio recordings. The videos themselves are nothing special, except when you stop to realize that they were directed to actually support the music being presented. This is a tradition that what we see on MTV and VH1 gave up on a long time ago (when, you know, they bother to show videos). The real feature here is the rehearsal footage. There is nothing like watching these musicians prepare for their concert. What’s nice about this is that it provides us with yet more organic jazz improvisations from these virtuosos.

If you haven’t ever heard Krall’s music before, you could do a lot worse than buying this DVD to get you started. However, once you start, you won’t stop.

Buy it from Amazon.