The soothing sound of Jazz
Last night I went to see Diana Krall in concert at the Royal Albert Hall. The fact that I had a ticket was already sheer coincidence and the result of some office bragging: I showed a colleague how to order tickets online - even tricking the firm's Firewall into believing that it is a site related to the world of high finance - and, for lack of better alternatives, bought said ticket to last night's concert.
It couldn't have come at a better time; the right remedy after a week of high frustrations and low morale. I have heard a lot of Diana Krall before but somehow her looks consistantly turned me away from checking out her repertoire. She simply looks too good to be a credible representative of jazz music. When I think of jazz greats, such artists like Eartha Kitt, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, etc... come to mind, not this sweet looking blonde Britney Spears look-alike. And here apologies are immediately due: Diana Krall is a fabulously accomplished artist, with a wide range of talent and of surprising perfection.
22 songs, 13 followed by nine more after the interval, helped to literally forget that you are in a metropolis and in a hall with 4,000+ fellow listeners. After her first song I just closed my eyes and let myself be enwrapped by the smooth, slightly smokey voice and the fantastic band. I felt like being placed into some intimate setting of a jazz club in Paris or New York, not in a huge concert hall at all. It is a remarkable achievement of the artists, and the venue of the Royal Albert Hall, to provide such a perfect evening for a guy who needed serious unwinding this week, on this day, at that time. It worked.
Before the concert I treated myself to a light yet fulfilling dinner in the Elgar Room. I "forgot" to return the Elgar Menu, a mix of a momento (although it was the 4th time I have eaten there) of the evening and a reminder of what I ate and drank. It all worked out fine and I am totally unwound and at ease again.
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