Elvis , Diana in Toronto, Mon Aug . 15
Jazz diva Diana Krall and her husband, rocker Elvis Costello, watched raptly as Oscar Peterson performed at his birthday party yesterday.
Costello had fashioned new lyrics to When Summer Comes, a waltz the seven-time Grammy winner wrote a couple of years ago.
Before she played, Krall explained how a performance she saw as a young woman by Peterson, accompanying Ella Fitzgerald, transformed her future.
"Life was never the same from that day on," said Krall who immediately went out and bought the Night Train LP, to which she still listens. "You are always with me and my band," she said.
Later, a nonplused Krall explained her nerves to reporters: "I'm at a complete loss. This is a really big deal for me. He's my hero."
Costello's lyrics to When Summer Comes speak of the losses of winter but also of the new blooms that spring carries, "in every shade of hope."
He told The News that the remarks Peterson made about the deaths of so many jazz giants in a telephone conversation they had prompted the moody piece.
"That guided me really," said the singer and songwriter.
Here are the lyrics as published in Toronto Star:
WHEN SUMMER COMES
(music by Oscar Peterson
new lyrics by Elvis Costello
played and sung by Diana Krall)
The land was white
While the winter moon was absent from the night
And the blackness only pierced by far off stars
But as every day still succeeds the darkest moments we have known
When seasons turn
Springtime colours will return
And as the first pale flowers of the lengthening hours
Seem to brighten the twilight and that melancholy cloak
Then a fresh perfume just seems to burst from each bloom
Until the green shoots through each day
As it arrives in every shade of hope
When summer comes
There will be a dream of peace
And a breath that I've held so long that I can barely release
Then perhaps I may even find a room somewhere
Just a place I can still speak to you
( Submitted by Scielle)