Dianne Reeves:

Well, I did wake up this morning, the first things off of my lips were 'today will be a good day'! And since I've done this song, I have to practise what I preach! And so I feel like it's been an extraordinary day.

Dianne Reeves:

Mmh, absolutely! My mother is a doer and a thinker and a forwardmover. And all my life I have watched her live her life in a way, in a kind of way of service to others, even when they didn't know it. My mother has been a blessing to me, a blessing to my friends and anyone else who knows her. And so through all of this I pray that one day when I am eightythree years old like her, I.ll be like her.

Frage: 'Today Will Be A Good Day' was recorded live. Where?

Dianne Reeves:

In Los Angeles, we recorded it with Russell Malone and Reginald Veal and Greg Hutchinson.

Frage: How did your mother react after hearing it for the first time?

Dianne Reeves:

Well, we had just done it in the studio and I was coming home, I live in Denver, Colorado, I was going back from L. A. and she picked me up from the airport and I put a CD of it in the CD-player in the car and she was driving and I turned and I looked and tears where streaming down her face and she was smiling, at the same timing she was moving swiftly into the wrong lane! So, (laughs) immediately I turned it off and said, 'oops, I am sorry, we'll listen to this at home!' (laughs) But she absolutely loves this song.

Frage: The album is about love. Life should be about life. But then, this is not the average love-album that you might find in any recordstore, with cheesy arrangements of sugarcane sweet ballads. The CD-title makes even sense by sending out the message: talk or sing about love - when you know (love). That comes across. You know, you experienced love - all sorts, all shades, all shapes.

Dianne Reeves:

Love is a very, very powerful thing. All my life, you know, you hear, God is love, and love, you know, is the power that can change and you really don't take it seriously until you come to a point in your life and you realize that the reason that you are the person that you are is because either you were loved or you were not loved. And so in this record what I try to do is show the evolution of my love experience. And I came to realize that love is something that takes on a lot of responsibility, it's so great and it has the ability to change lifes. And I have realized that, as you were saying, that no matter whether it's love between a man or a woman or a parent and a child, friends or what you have, love is all encompassing and also encompasses many, many things. And when you give love freely, purely and generously you can change not only your life but the people that are around you.

Frage: Talking about change: Certain things can change a voice. Most certainly, it's knowledge and experience that can, that do change a voice. And now your voice reflects - may I call it 'wisdom'?

Dianne Reeves:

Yeah, you can say that! (laughs) I think, you know, after you've gone through the trials and trubbleations of life you have endured, you've come to understand that, I mean, in my case I realized for the majority of my life I was swimming upstream. And I forgot that fact that in this world everybody has a unique purpose and is unique, in all the world there is no people that are alike. So it wasn't until I decided to turn around and go with my own flow that I started to realize the abundance of experiences and good things that were coming into my life. I tell my audiences a lot of times, there are a lot of things that have happened in my life that I prayed for, dream for, wished for, but there are so many other things that I didn't even think about, you know, happening and yet they happened in my life. And I know they happened because somebody else desired them and prayed for them for me.

Frage: Your sound balanced, you're laidback, choosing - with one, two exceptions - not necessarily a ballad tempo, but a medium slow tempo, as if you are walking and observing, reflecting and telling a story.

Dianne Reeves:

Well, I found that you learn a lot of things by stopping and taking your time. I never ever saw that before, but patience is truely a virtue. It's, when you stop and you listen and you look and you observe, it's easier to make a decision about how you are going to move and do the next thing.

Frage: 'Windmills Of Your Mind' is a different kind, it's not about balance. It's about a turmoil of feelings, about ambivalence, about the surreal aspects of love and life. Sophistcated on different levels, and difficult to sing.

Dianne Reeves:

Oh, yeah, it's a very difficult song, but because you get wrapped up in the beauty of the lyrics and the music. It is those things that propel you to keep moving forward and singing and feeling because it's just, for me this song really, really does describe when you are in that place of quiet desperation. And we all have been there. And I've never ever come across a piece of music that describes so accurately, you know, what you feel. And so when I selected that song, which is a favourite among a lot of jazzmusicians, I was really, really excited to sing it.

Frage: One observer noticed once that Sarah Vaughan's voice at a certain period of her career changed 'from a good red wine to a divine cognac'. I noticed that also with your tribute to Sassy. Now, another delicatesse comes to my mind: It's as if you enjoy the words like delicious food, tasting every syllable, every letter, the 'a's, the 'o's, the 'e's.

Dianne Reeves:

Oh my goodness! I just said that to somebody the other day! And it's so true, especially on a song like 'Midnight Sun'! Those lyrics are so beautiful and they conjure not only amazing pictures, but feelings of a moment captured in time. And I love being able to feel those words in my mouth and sing them, so that other people can feel them as I do.

Frage: You seem to enjoy . again - all ranges, from a lowdown 'love is the saddest thing when it goes away' to that last, extreme high note in 'Over The Weekend' or to another jubilating high note of pure joy at the end of 'Today Will Be A Good Day'. You seem to feel free to go anywhere, going places. And it seems as if the choice of key is less important than before?

Dianne Reeves:

In a lot of ways, yes, because now I allow my voice to motivate. And I guess I always had, but now it's much easier to allow my voice, my inner self, my spirit to motivate my instrument. And when that happens there is a, you are peaceful and you can let go. And I find myself singing things that if I were just to be walking around the house and just trying to hit a certain note I couldn't do, but in the excitement of the experience of the moment of the song a voice, my instrument just loosens up and allows, you know, all that I am feeling to come through. So I really have had a wonderful time celebrating my entire range and I havn't sung this high since I was 25 years old, you know! And it's amazing that it has always been there, it always remained and that the joy of singing is still intact.

Frage: In the CD booklet you are mentioned doing 'vocals and vocalese'. Just by adding the word 'vocalese': Is that also a way of expressing respect for an artform that seems to fade?

Dianne Reeves:

You are so right, you know! There are a lot of very subtle tributes on this entire record to people that I love, admire and on the song 'Social Call' which was written by Jon Hendricks, I fell compelled to write a vocalese because I wanted to write it and do it in the spirit in which I knew he creates in, in a spirit that has inspired me on the song 'Loving You', while the melody that people have always heard is reminipiting at the end of the phrase, the little vocal phrase, and singing the very, very high notes, I wanted to pay tribute to this beautiful simple melody, but then at the end I wanted to also say, 'but I heard you', and just put my little stamp on it. But there are a lot of things within this record that have all of those things. I always call them 'my ancestors'! (laughs)

Frage: After touring a lot with Romero Lubambo and Russell Malone you took a break in order to recharge your batteries. That's generally important, even more since we all get older and the world spins faster year by year. 'Over The Weekend' reminds us of that, of the necessity to 'stay away from the noise of the crowd'.

Dianne Reeves:

(laughs) Yeah. I think sometimes the noise of the crowd is not so much the volume but the sameness, and I think there are times when you desire to hear the quiet and in the quiet your own voice. And I think it's, it is easy to be lonely in the midst of crowds and that is happening to me especially on the road many, many times. And I like being able to go away and get away and have a comfort of space and being and feeling without stimulation. And so from the surrounding things, the things that we are bombarded with every day. So this song 'Over the Weekend' which is a very obscure song that was sung many, many, many years ago by the great Mabel Mercer and then again by Nancy Wilson, and then nobody ever really did it, is a song that is so near and dear to my heart.

Frage: Another reference to your chosen way of life being a singer we can find in 'Social Call': You sing 'singing has been so amazing' - but as an artist, lots of times you might not be alone, but lonesome.

Dianne Reeves:

Yes, ecaxtly. Yes, you know, I love getting to the stage but I found now that it's most important to have a balance in your life, so I created that in my life.

Frage: 'Singing has been amazing', and you recent singing turned out to be so different: You said that this unusual situation accompanied by just two guitarists has opened up new ways of singing. In what way?

Dianne Reeves:

Well, I had the beautiful opportunity to work with both of these great guitarists that I have worked with one one on one for many years, but never all together. And what happened in this particular setting, it happened right here in Cologne, Germany: A lot of singers came to the concert and afterwards came down and talked about how they felt about the setting. This was a setting that was very, very vulnerable for me, at the same time it was a setting that was very revealing. And I just wanted to take the opportunity to stand in all of that and see what would happen. And what happened was, you know, something very beautiful. I just found places in myself that were just so calm and so peaceful and joyess and knowledeable and open and broad and all of these things and it came out in the music in various subtle ways. And I wanted to be able to stay with that, so you hear a lot of that on the new record. But I also love the experience of just being really, really close to the edge and jumping off!

Frage: Indeed, a special situation: inmidst of two charming, very different gentlemen. The idea was born as a project for a festival here in Germany, for JazzBaltica. Although knowing Romero and Russell for many, many years and though loving to take risks: Were there any reservations or hesitations at first, thinking, 'will it work out, how will that sound'?

Dianne Reeves:

Yeah, you know, because we did it at JazzBaltica, it was something we did because that was, they said, try it, you know! But then when it turned out to be a tour, cause everybody loved it so much that for two years they kept saying, you need to do this, it's really special, you guys need to develop that! And I was like, oh no! All the way til our first performance which was in Turkey, I remember looking at Romero, and Romero has this gift of looking at somebody in their eyes and being able to make them feel like they want to melt and just feel calm. And he is like, .oh, don't worry about it! It's going to be beautiful! It's going to be fine!. And Russell has this other very short and stern way of saying, 'look, we got this!', you know! (laughs) So when we ended up on stage doing it, it almost made me cry because from the first note I was a little anxious because there weren't those things that I was usually, normally be around me, like drums and piano and other, you know, sounds. And then when I started to settle in and listen to the sound of each guitar and my voice mingleing with these sounds, from that point on, we did 25 shows and every show I ran to the stage because I couldn't wait to have this experience.

Frage: Your journey took you to many places, including a city where the 'Singing Revolution' took place and where the audience sang along with you in a way that gave me goosebumps: a concert in Tallinn.

Dianne Reeves:

That was a beautiful night. I remember. You know, I remember each of those experiences vividly. And, you know, here we were in this, we had never been there before and, okay, we wanted to invite the people to be a part of what it was we were doing, and they were right there with us. And the fact that they would sing and would wanna be a part of it, you think it gave y o u goosebumps? We were all just, we couldn't believe it! At the end of the show we were like, that was an amazing experience!

Frage: Does this new way of singing in the context of two guitars have already an impact on your performances with a quartet / quintet, with guitar, piano plus rhythm section?

Dianne Reeves:

Changed everything, it really did. I found this other place that I really, really love, and what happened was, while I was doing the concerts with the two guitarists then I would come back and still work with my trio. And I would take the things from the two guitarists back to my trio and vice versa, and that's why I ended up having everybody on the record. But it totally changed my way of approaching anything, any music right now. You know, you grow, you learn, you stay open and hope for those epiphanies and aha-moments. and I really, really got it working with the two guitarists. And we will continue, of course, to do that particular configuration for as long as we possibly can. But the beauty of what came out of that I always carry with me. The music became on many levels, it was, there is a spiritual aspect, there is a very sensious aspect, there are all these things that maybe I was holding back and was able to unleash when I got with these two guitarists. And I love it because it all came through trust and it's something I wanna hold on to. It has not only changed my musical life, but it has also changed my personal life.

Frage: Another thing you share with Sarah Vaughan is that you have reached a level of excellence where material almost seems to be secondary, 'it doesn't matter anymore what kind of style you sing' (Sarah Vaughan).

Dianne Reeves:

Yeah, and the styles for me that people view as styles are really just colours, colours that I have collected through my entire career. The thing that matters most to me is a lyric. A lyric is so important, it doesn't have to be the greatest melody, cause I have sung songs that basically had no melody, at all, but the lyric really addressed my life and spoke to me in a way that I could reach in myself and find something of myself and be able to interpret, this particular lyric. And so I said about trying to, you know, always find that in a song, I always need a great lyric whether I write it or there is already, it had already been written.

Frage: Another sign of growth: developing, maturing and at the same time bringing back memories of how everything started. 'Midnight Sun' is a standard that is treated almost in the old Dianne-Reeves-fashion, with those fusion elements and tricky little details that a Billy Childs arrangement of those early years would offer.

Dianne Reeves:

Actually, Geoff Keezer did that arrangement. And that was really interesting, but you are right, I mean, it would be things that I would with Billy and the thing that I love about this song, is - I mean, I don't even really, really know how old this song is, but I know that it's older than me, and it was always done first as an instrumental by Lionel Hampton who wrote it, and then Johnny Mercer puts these amazing lyrics to it. And then many, many, many people, Ella has probably the quintessential version of this song, Sarah sang it, everybody has sung this song, and it still stands the test of time. Well, there were two reasons why I wanted to do this song this way: first of all to reach back into like you said my fusion elements, but also because we live in a time where melody is just not important to a lot of people who are writing songs these days. And the craft of lyrics sometimes is not the most important thing. And I find that there are a lot of songs that are out there that nobody else can sing but that person, so they don't have the test of time in a long life. And I guess in my way of, you know, my mature way of looking and saying, okay, I have some sage advice for the younger generations not telling them what to do but hopefully inspiring them to do more, 'listen to this song that has stood the test of time, and you can take it and can track it back to when it was first done in the most simple elegant jazz way to this funky kind of way, and it still is a beautiful song'.

Frage: A picture that is about changing and growing is a painting by Gustav Klimt.

Dianne Reeves:

I went to the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, Austria, many years ago because I love Gustav Klimt. And at the time I only had pieces of his that were in a calendar. And I remember the one piece he called 'The Kiss' and I thought, wow, this is the most romantic celebration of a woman on canvas that I have ever seen, with the fabrics, and just the love. A friend of mine said, well, when you go there, go to the Belvedere and you will see it, it's huge! I was like, wow! So I go into the Belvedere Museum and before I can even get to 'The Kiss', there is this piece that is huge and that is on the wall, it's unfinished, but I stand there for at least 45 minutes looking at this piece, watching it unfold and evolve. And it is a piece that is untitled by him of a woman from when she is a child to a mature woman. And her many different faces, attitudes, and you can see it in her face, in her dress, the tilt of her head, maybe later on in a line, in her eyes, under her eyes, until you, you can follow this face from a child to a mature woman, and it's the most incredible celebration of a human being, especially the beauty of a woman, that I have ever seen on canvas.

Frage: Talking about change: Who will be the next president of The United States?

Dianne Reeves:

Barack Obama! (laughs) And I can say that without hesitation! Because one of the things that, I mean, for a long time I watched him before I even made a decision that that is where my vote will go. But my vote is going there because I believe that he really is a candidate of change. And while that really, really sounds light, I think, it's rich and deep and beautiful because he is someone who has come into this arena with energy, intelligence, and an attitude towards humanity. And the humanitarian spirit is the one thing that is starting to fade, not just in our country but in all of the world. The spirit of serving one another and understanding the importance and the value of a life, not just putting people in a bundle, but a life. And I love that he has this understanding and love that he is without having all of the political stains that a lot of candidates that have come into this arena have because they have been in there for a long time, in a lot of ways it's kind of like Lech Walesa, you know, coming up from the people, supported by the people to change the country, to make a new day. And I believe in Barack Obama.

Frage: Talking about politics: How was it working with George Clooney in 'Good Night, And Good Luck!'?

Dianne Reeves:

Well, that was amazing cause he is a very intelligent man, extremely funny, very knowledgeable and has a way to really evoke the best in every artist that he works with. And I saw it with the actors that he was working with, and I felt it when I was working with him. And then, the other plus about being on the set with him for two-and-half days is: He is very good on the eyes!

Frage: What a beautiful routine to begin the day by saying, 'it's gonna be a good day!' and to close the day by saying 'Good night, and Good Luck!'

Dianne Reeves:

... 'Good Luck!' I love it! (laughs) Yes, absolutely! I have to remember that. But it has, since the film has come into my life and I had the opportunity to do this, my audiences have increased, and I told him once, I said, 'you know, I have had many great nights and a whole lotta good luck!' So, absolutely!