Jazz in Paris has exotic implications:Josephine Baker dancing hoodoo at the Revue Negre , Paul Robeson intoning marxist lullabies on street corners and at the Opera House; Nina Simone singing one song or three hours worth depending on how she felt about the audience.There were also African musicans flowing in from the colonies, informing these Americans of the origins of the music played. In addition to the the tradition of Cabaret Singing that interacted, worked with and fought against the narrative traditions of those Americans and Africans.
In this way jazz became a sort of lingua franca, that is until Diana Krall moved in. The white bre(e)ad Canadian is only considered a jazz artist by marketing execs, who once again want to turn shit into gold (records). There is none of the history, the problems, the delicacy and the passion of people who escaped to France, or French who escaped to the Cabaret.
Krall sounds like she has flown from New York on the Concorde, that she puts Evian on her rider- and that Evian is as close as she has gotten to Francophone culture. There is no reason that this concert needed to come from Paris- i’m sure she sounds the same in Debuke. Even though it’s a live album-you cannot tell that- the big band, the piano, her voice all have the studio polish that marks a post modern “diva”- one whose emotion and phrasing have been replaced with octave scaling gymnastics.