Shedding Spice Girl Suggestions, Krall Shows the Beauty Within

If you’d only heard the publicity about singer-pianist Diana Krall, you might get the wrong impression. The glamour-girl cover art on her recordings? The “Melrose Place” appearances? The sexy magazine spreads? That’s not Krall at all.

The Krall that opened a two-night run Friday in Founders Hall at the Orange County Performing Art Center, part of a three-night Southern California tour that found her at the Veterans Wadsworth Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday, was no siren. More Doris Day than Mae West, she was dressed in a floor-length, sleeveless, black evening gown and appeared uneasy, vulnerable, even shy as she sat on the piano bench squinting into the lights. She rarely smiled during the performance, and then only at some clever turn from her trio mates, guitarist Russell Malone and bassist Ben Wolfe, or to acknowledge a particularly hearty ovation from the packed house.

Krall’s true beauty shone through as she sang and played piano. Her voice had all the sexy sophistication that the fashion-model photos promise but without the overconfident, seductress personality that her platinum good looks suggest. Warm, occasionally smoky and capable of the most delicate dynamics, her voice reveals honest personality and an intimacy few singers generate. Her phrasing is direct and intelligent, always in the service of telling the story rather than making some stylistic points.

During an especially melancholy reading of the Al Dubin-Harry Warren ballad “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” which she dedicated to James Dean, Krall’s performance recalled Peggy Lee in both tone and the way she got inside the lyric as if it were a dramatic role. Comparisons to Lee surfaced again during “Lost Mind” and Krall’s nearly conversational delivery and pacing.

Though there was a certain adults-only content to her singing, Krall’s piano accompaniment was almost childlike in its playfulness and simplicity. Not a technically flashy player, Krall made every note count and gave each line meaning. She frequently injected quotes from other songs into her solos, including a line from “Yes, We Have No Bananas!” near the end of “I Love Being Here With You,” something that prompted her first smile of the evening. Her spareness and perfect placement on “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” suggested the piano work of Shirley Horn.

Guitarist Malone was the virtuoso of the group, rifling through solos with sparkling runs and involved chordal progressions. At one point, he followed Krall’s quotes from “‘Mona Lisa” and “Somebody’s Rocking My Dreamboat” with a line from “It Might As Well Be Spring.” Without bass or keyboard support and with Krall singing demurely from the piano bench, Malone’s accompaniment on “I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance With You” was a model of responsiveness and grace.

On the upright bass, Wolfe, a veteran of work with Wynton Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr., gave the drummerless trio its rhythmic direction, often in tandem with Malone’s pulsing chords. Wolfe, who in contrast to Krall seemed in perpetual smile, emphasized beat and melody in his solos, a tack that fit well with Krall’s direct piano work.

As the set progressed, Krall grew more comfortable with the audience, recalling how far she has come since playing an Orange County hotel about 12 years back and acknowledging that a Peter Frampton poster shared space with one of Charlie Parker on her bedroom wall as a teen.

She spun a pensive piano prelude with hints of “Blame It on My Youth” before having fun with Nat Cole’s suggestive hit “Frim Fram Sauce.” She closed the show with Dave Frishberg’s tune made famous by Blossom Dearie, “Peel Me a Grape,” but without Dearie’s cooing sexuality.

Marketing aside, Krall may not have the personality to be a sex symbol, but there’s no question she can sing.