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Thanks to her maturely seductive voice, subtle piano chops, and a deep-rooted familiarity with the classic American songbook, Diana Krall is good enough to have earned the attention of older Vocal Jazz fans looking for a throwback to the good old days. But more importantly, she's also caught the collective ear of a younger audience nostalgic for a past they've never experienced. Ranging from lightly swinging piano trios a la early Nat King Cole to the string-enhanced sophistication of 1998's Grammy-nominated When I Look in Your Eyes, her output draws almost entirely from a body of songs penned before she was born. Krall gives refreshingly unmannered performances, using her vocal and piano skills to sell standards and not herself. She's now topped the traditional jazz charts longer than any other artist in history. While Krall isn't an innovator, she doesn't need to be. Diana Krall's classy take on classic material shows that jazz still speaks to modern, mainstream audiences.
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About Diana Krall
b. 16 November 1964, Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. Raised in a musical family, as a child Krall tried to learn all of Fats Waller records, and to play and sing at the same time. She studied classical piano at school but played jazz style in her school band. Her first professional gig was at the age of 15 and she has not stopped since. She won a Vancouver Jazz Festival scholarship to Berklee College Of Music in the USA but later returned to her home-town where she continued to play professionally. Among her musical associates were visiting Americans Ray Brown and Jeff Hamilton. They were both deeply impressed and convinced Krall to go to Los Angeles, which she did with help from a Canadian Arts Council grant. In Los Angeles, she studied with Jimmy Rowles who persuaded her to sing more. Although she had sung from the start she had always entertained reservations about this aspect of her work. Nevertheless, the inclusion of singing into her performances led to more engagements than had been the case as a pianist.
In 1984 Krall returned to Canada from Los Angeles, this time settling in Toronto and she appeared in New York in 1990. She continued to attract respectful admiration from other musicians, including John Clayton, and he and Hamilton accompanied Krall on her first album. Her accompanists on later records have included Brown, Stanley Turrentine and Christian McBride, and her regular working band colleagues, guitarist Russell Malone and bass player Paul Keller. Krall's piano playing is crisp, deft and swinging. Her singing style is relaxed and intimate and she interprets ballads with warmth and persuasive charm. Although forward thinking and alert to contemporary musical thought in jazz, Krall's heritage is such that she brings echoes of earlier swinging simplicity to her work. The fact that 1995's debut album for Impulse! Records was a tribute to Nat "King" Cole was highly appropriate considering her musical direction.
The follow-up, 1997's Love Scenes, rose above the Cole allusions owing to the power of Krall's personality. Her interpretation of George and Ira Gershwin's "They Can't Take That Away From Me" was particularly inspired, featuring some sensitive double bass playing from McBride. When I Look In Your Eyes spent over one year at the top of the Billboard jazz chart, and in 2000 Krall won a Grammy Award. Similarly successful was A Night In Paris, confirming that Krall can seemingly do no wrong commercially. On occasion she will slip out of her jazz role and come ever nearer to being accepted as a classy pop singer. Her versions of songs such as Billy Joel's "Just The Way You Are" and Burt Bacharach's "The Look Of Love" emphasize this point. In December 2003, Krall married singer-songwriter Elvis Costello.
External link
Diana Krall's website (http://www.dianakrall.com)
