Dianne Schuur

This is the review of her concert in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria 2009

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To be honest, we never expected that Diane Schuur’s show were going to be so amazing. The night before, Mr. 335 had shocked us out with the precious and soulful guitar playing coming out of his axe, so I thought to myself, “this Diane…will have to work hard to beat last night Carlton’s performance”

The concert took place, once again, at the Alfredo Kraus Auditory. As almost always, we reached the hall right around 21.00 hours, so soon we were sat in our seats ready to give Diane Schuur a fair “chance”.

Our seats were not “The Seats” this time, mainly because of me, that wasted from Monday to Thursday to decide whether to go or not, so when we finally got the tickets, the best seats were all sold out. Anyway, I can’t complaint about it. We had a perfect view of the stage, only that not so close as we are used to.

With just a few minutes delay the show started off.

I had never heard about this girl before, either about her music.

To my surprise, Diane Schuur was not a black woman, but a white one! She was blind too, so she steeped on the stage holding the arm of a man, that I thought could be her husband, although it is just a presumption, I mean, I might be totally wrong, but that’s what I thought then.

The Washington born singer introduced us her band mates: Randy Porter on piano and Scott Steed on contrabass.

Diane Schuur drank a bit of water, grabbed the microphone and suddenly, since the very first track, she had filled up the hall with her warm, sweet and versatile voice.

Schuur faced the show just with a contrabass man and a pianist, as Larry Carlton did with a bass guitar and drums.

They played most of the tracks of her last CD, “Some Other Time” but also several jazz hits.

Diane Schuur’s singing is outstanding! She owns a high-class, soulful jazz style voice, able to make you feel the music with no effort from your side. She grabs you without your permission and then, on the fly, you’ve forgotten everything around you and you see yourself hypnotized by a musician that has disarmed you, simply by her beautiful singing.

The US singer grew up listening to her mother’s Duke Ellington and Dinah Washington albums. She has won several Grammy and is one of the most recognised voices in today’s Jazz.

We listened pure jazz tracks, elegantly arranged, loaded with tons of musical sensibility and good taste, that made me quickly understand why there were so many people in the audience yelling at her “We love you Diane!” and asking her to sing certain tracks………..now,……I love her too!

The show reached the end, she said good-bye but the audience furiously clapping, refused to leave the hall. Diane Schuur came back to the stage for an encore. Two more extra bonus tracks and, once again, she said “thank you, thank you so much” but we still wanted some more. Suddenly we saw her and her band on stage again, but, folks, there was not more song to sing, I mean the repertoire they had set up for us, was already finished, so she began to improvise. I remember I heard her talking to her pianist “do you know the one that goes….” And while singing, she told him “now, B minor” The show finally ended with a superb, precious, a capella version of “Somewhere over the Rainbow” that knocked us out.

What an amazing show!!