How Deep Is the Ocean

The ocean metaphor becomes genuinely vast in Krall's hands, as she opens this standard with solo piano chords that ring with cathedral-like spaciousness. The arrangement builds with extraordinary patience — bass enters first as a distant pulse, then brushes materialize like tide foam, and the full trio gradually assembles around her voice without ever crowding it. Her delivery here is among her most emotionally exposed, the usual cool reserve cracking just enough to reveal genuine vulnerability underneath. The contralto drops to near-speaking tones in the verses, then opens into fuller, more urgent phrases at the emotional peaks, mapping the song's central question about the immeasurability of love onto dynamic shifts that feel utterly organic. The harmonic language is rich with extended chords and subtle reharmonizations that add modern depth to the vintage melody. There is a quality of searching in both her voice and her piano work — phrases that reach upward and then fall back, as though the answer to the song's impossible questions keeps slipping just out of grasp. This belongs to the tradition of jazz ballad interpretation as emotional excavation, where technical mastery serves feeling rather than display. Listen to this when love has made you philosophical, when the enormity of what you feel demands a song equally boundless.