Customer Reviews

Diana Krall: Live in Rio

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Diana Krall and company do it again! Another fine live performance we can experience again and again on DVD. The musical selections are very well recorded and nicely arranged. The group's generally laid-back mood is definitely in sync with this Brazilian-inspired concert. The instrumental improvisations are polished and very musical and Diana's vocals will transport you to Rio.

To those pseudo-techie critics, I recommend you pull your heads out of your iPods and really listen to the fantastic performances here. As a life-long jazz musician myself, I have better ears and probably better electronics than most of you. I find no basis for your negative reviews. As the witty Mose Allison once wrote, "Critics... they can't swim and they can't even float. They just stand at the shore and wave at the boat."

Pay no attention to the "amateur opinion havers" and blog-trogs. This is an exceptional Diana Krall concert and DVD recording. If you like her work, you'll probably love this video.

I had the good fortune to have been a disc jockey on one of the few radio stations that still played "Easy Listening" music up until the late '90s, KQUE in Houston(until it was sold and flipped to Spanish).
I played Sinatra and Jobim, Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto and Sergio Mendes, wishing all the time that the bossa nova had not been just a passing musical genre, in the US at least. Then here comes Diana Krall bringing back that magical beat on a couple of her recent albums and THEN, a DVD of a concert in Rio! I just finished watching the whole thing from end to end and I was enthralled, especially with the audience of cariocas singing along in Portuguese to,"The Boy from Ipanema". I thought I heard Astrud somewhere in there at the back table. I almost didn't buy this DVD because of some of the negative reviews here, but my birthday is coming up and I thought, hey, I'll get this for myself and tell those who would buy me another shirt that I'm fixed, thank you. If you are determined to purchase only one Diana Krall,"Live in ..." DVD, by all means get Paris.
But if you love Diana, John, Jeff and Anthony AND the bossa nova and can't imagine it getting better than played before an audience in the city of its birth (and the liner notes didn't even put an apostrophe in "its"), buy this DVD as fast as you can.

This is the first time I've written a review, but I just don't agree with the other reviews here.
I am a huge Diana Krall fan or perhaps I should say was a huge fan, because after buying both Quiet Nights and Live in Rio, I'm starting to reexamine my position.
I have all her early CD's as well as Live in Paris, which I've watched at least 50 times. I should state that I don't care for her newer CD's, but her rendition of the American Songbook songs are superb.
However, Live in Rio was a disappointment. Though it used the same artists as Live in Paris, it lacked the energy and creativity of Live in Paris, and I expected to see the passion of the environment that spawned the Bossa Nova rythms that seemed to imbue her earlier work.
Finally, the quality of the lighting and camera work was not even in the same league as Live in Paris. The Blue Ray (which I purchased) was much worse than the standard DVD of Live in Paris.
In summary, nice but not the Diana I came to love. Uninspired!!!

I have both the Montreal and Paris DVD's they both have their own character and personality. The Brazil DVD adds a mature musicianship that puts Diana and her group in a new category which will carry her into the future. Guitar players are astonished by Anthony Wilson's genius and the best jazz guitarist of today, Jeff Hamilton who is internationally known as the greatest brush drummer shows that on this DVD. And, of course, Mr. Clayton who is one of the greatest composers as well as bass players. No, this DVD is more than a performance. It is a tribute to great jazz players. Maybe the Oscar Peterson Munich concert equals it in importance... Buy this and you will be playing it 10 years from now

Being a Brazilian, my opinion can't be other than "fantastic".
It was great to hear Diana singing in Portuguese. And with a carioca's (from Rio de Janeiro) accent at that!!!
She looks even more gorgeous, her voice is a sweet caress to the listener's ears and soul, the musicians playing with her are spectacular, and the images are clear as only the blu-ray technology (so far) can achieve.
I've never been to Rio (and probably never will, for in my opinion the natural beauties fall short of overcoming the violence over there), but the public added a very nice and warm atmosphere to this show, and the locations in which they filmed the extras and interviews really are great.
Even with all its problems, Rio still is the perfect background for such a wonderful combination of bossa nova and light jazz.

Mrs. Krall has grown old, like all of us. But less than Anthony Wilson and especially Jack Hamilton.
Compared with the Paris Concert at the Olympia, this takes second place. Maybe it's the age of all members, maybe is the Rio's venue, maybe they took to much sunshine in Ipanema Beach. Mrs Krall has grown up emotionally, but she lost some of the magificent "peppy energy" she showed us at Paris. Her right hand piano is a bit more forceful which contrasts with the left hand, that remains weak.

It is probably unfair to blame the sound engineers. I know the sound of Olympia in Paris. It is a rather small place where a single voice unamplified is quite good in the mid to rear stalls, I don't know about the balcony. The French always had good sound engineers. Brazil has no tradition in that area.Most good Bossa nova records were recorded in New York studios.

Anyway it is a good live session. But releasing it in Blue Ray with compressed DTS sound, makes no sense. It would make sense in HI-DEF Sound and Standard video..If that exists?

Like a lot of commenters here, I'm a longtime fan of the Paris concert who has wanted to see it released on Blu-ray (although the DVD of Paris looks and sounds nice on my setup, even projected 9 1/2' wide).

I bought this Blu-ray in part figuring that if the Paris concert was ever to make it to Blu-ray, this disk would have to be successful first - if Rio tanked commercially, forget Paris. (My apologies to Billy Crystal).

Well, I was pleasantly suprised by this disk. I'd put the quality of the playing at nearly the same level as the Paris concert and better than on the Montreal disk, particularly Anthony Wilson's guitar work. Diana's soloing was not as flashy as in Paris - fewer sly quotes of other tunes slipped in - but very appropriate to the material involved. The singing seems less well-crafted (she seems to chew her words here rather than sing wide-open), but the overall presentation is very good. I've always loved her version of "Frim Fram Sauce" and "I Don't Know Enough About You" - both from her The Girl in the Other Room CD - but no Joni Mitchell song? ;->

It does seem as though they had only one or two HD cameras at the concert, which were focused on Diana's face and keyboard, with everyone else, onstage or in the audience, caught on lesser-quality cameras (or just not lit as well) - but that's balanced out by the senic shots, which are out-of-this-world beautiful, and used to lead into most of the tunes.

On the other hand, the other onstage shots are not subjected to image "enhancement" that might make them irritating - no halos or jaggies of the sort that make the first Chris Botti disk nearly unwatchable. The video of the other musicians looks about as good as it does on the Paris concert DVD, which is very good. Most shots of the audience, however, are so underexposed they're nearly unviewable. (Do you buy a concert disk to look at the audience? I didn't think so.)

By the way, to those who complained that this disk doesn't have lossless audio, or sounds flat, you have to manually select the DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 track on the setup screen, changing the default from PCM Stereo, which apparently was chosen for maximum compatibility with older receivers.

Don't miss the acoustic "rooftop session" in the extras, with Diana, Anthony Wilson on acoustic guitar, and Jeff Hamilton playing brushes on a pad, jamming in a crowded lounge on a pair of facing couches, with most of those in attendance ignoring them - apparently music-making is less of a spectator-sport and more of an everyday thing in Rio.

Something weird happened here. The soundtrack sounds flat, Diana seems bored, the video is noisy and badly lit. The blue lighting is so intense at times, it creates the sort of posterization used back in the 60's for a psychedelic effect. Here, it is just a technical flaw. The video could be forgiven, but the sound quality is the biggest disappointment. Most of the material here is a rehash of her Paris concert on DVD. Diana seems to have grown tired of these songs. The things she does to try and make them more interesting only underline her apparent feeling that she needs to breathe new life into them somehow. It would have taken a great performance to overcome the flat sonics, but we don't get that here. Diana barely seems interested. Krall usually has an awkward honesty and subtle sarcastic wit that I have always found charming. If she revealed it in this concert, it must have been left on the cutting room floor. What was the point of putting this on blu-ray? It does so little to take advantage of the possibilities inherent in the medium. Very disappointed in this disk.

Good music and some great scenery of Rio, the site of the next Olympics. Not as good as the Paris DVD but the selections are worthy.

Being an senior I knew the words to almost all of
the song on the album...The songs bring back memories
from my teens and to retirement..Diana is a masster at the piano
and her personal style of singing outstanding...The allbum
is long but relaxing....You will getmoneys worth.

I also bought Quiet Nights. Good latin beat...The musicians
who accompany Diana are also First rate....The follow
up visit with her and friends reveals a side of Diana
you will not get with most Video DVD's

If you like JAZZ stylings with an orchestra this is it.