Diana Krall: The Boy From Ipanema

Quiz by Sharon Michiko Yoneda

 Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro

The real woman (current photo) who inspired Antonio Carlos Jobim to write the song in 1962. 

artist:  Diana Krall 

songwriters:  Antonio Carlos Jobim, Vinicius de Moraes, Norman Gimbel (English lyrics) and Stan Getz

date released:  1962 by Astrud Gilberto, Joao Gilberto and Stan Getz.  It was released in 2009 by Diana Krall.

*Teacher's alert:  For an ESL teacher, this song is a perfect listening quiz for that pesky third-person agreement, adding the 's' to the root verb.  With Diana Krall's clear pronunciation, you can really hear that agreement "s".  Also, it is a good opportunity to reteach the rule:  after /s/, /sh/, /ss/ and /ch/, you need to add an "es."  My quiz may appear overly simple, but that's not the point.  The point is to hear the third-person agreement, which confounds many beginners students.  

 Diana Krall was born in Nanaimo, British Columbia in 1964.  When she was four years old, she began playing the piano.  As she grew older, restaurants and other small venues on Vancouver Island hired her, and by seventeen, she had already become a professional musician.  She won a Vancouver Jazz Festival scholarship which took her to Boston's Berklee College of Music where other jazz luminaries such as Bob James got their early training.  From there, her musical journey took her to Los Angeles and then to New York where success was awaiting her.

With several hit albums to her name, Diana Krall married Elvis Costello in 2003. She composed a selection of her own songs in collaboration with her new husband which she released on an album called "The Girl in the Other Room."  

Diana Krall released "Quiet Nights", her twelfth studio album in 2009.  It contained her interpretation of classic bossa nova standards from Brazil such as "So Nice" and "The Girl(Boy) from Ipanema."  Many of the songs were composed by the renowned bossa nova composers, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Norman Gimbel (English lyricist). 

In her career so far, Diana has been nominated for eight Grammy Awards, two of which she won for Best Jazz Performance in 1999; and Best Jazz Vocal Album in 2002.  A multiple winner of the Canadian Smooth Jazz Awards and seven Juno Awards, she was awarded membership in the Order of British Columbia in 2002.  Even more prestigious, Diana Krall was made an Officer in the Order of Canada in 2005.  In 2003, she was given an honorary Ph.D. in Fine Arts from the University of Victoria.  Motherhood notwithstanding, we can expect more accolades to come for our premiere jazz songstress.