Diana Krall Biography Quotes 16 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Diana Jean Krall was born on November 16, 1964, in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. Raised in a household where records and a piano were constants, she grew up listening to jazz and popular songbook recordings that her father, Jim, avidly collected, while her mother, Adella, encouraged lessons and practice. She began playing piano at four and gravitated toward jazz as a teenager, performing standards in local restaurants around Nanaimo. Her early immersion in the music of Nat King Cole, Oscar Peterson, and Bill Evans formed a foundation for the blend of swing, lyricism, and nuance that would define her mature work.

Krall attended Berklee College of Music in Boston on a scholarship from 1981 to 1983, sharpening technique and musical literacy in a rigorous environment. A key turning point came when the legendary bassist Ray Brown heard her and urged her to pursue deeper study in Los Angeles. Taking that advice, she moved south to work under pianist and pedagogue Jimmy Rowles, whose mentorship refined her touch, tone, and harmonic sensibility. Back in Canada she also drew guidance from multi-instrumentalist Don Thompson, absorbing the interplay and subtlety that drive small-group jazz.

Career Beginnings
Krall began building a professional career in the late 1980s and early 1990s, spending time in Toronto, Montreal, and New York while developing a trio concept that fused clear, uncluttered vocals with right-hand melody and left-hand swing. Her debut album, Stepping Out (1993), recorded for the Canadian label Justin Time, featured bassist John Clayton and drummer Jeff Hamilton, two collaborators whose deep time feel and classic sensibility dovetailed with her approach. Their understated chemistry became a hallmark of her early sound.

Only Trust Your Heart (1995) widened her profile. Produced by Tommy LiPuma, who soon became one of her most important creative partners, the album included Ray Brown on bass and featured the warm tenor sound of Stanley Turrentine, linking Krall directly to a lineage of modern jazz masters. All for You: A Dedication to the Nat King Cole Trio (1996), recorded with guitarist Russell Malone and bassist Paul Keller, showcased her affinity for the Cole trio format, emphasizing conversational swing and meticulous phrasing. Love Scenes (1997), with Malone and bassist Christian McBride, further confirmed her command of intimate trio settings and her ear for standards.

Breakthrough and International Recognition
Krall's international breakthrough arrived with When I Look in Your Eyes (1999), produced by Tommy LiPuma. The album balanced small-group subtlety with elegant orchestration and earned widespread acclaim, winning a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album and garnering a rare Album of the Year nomination, introducing her to a much larger audience without compromising jazz integrity. The Look of Love (2001) deepened the orchestral palette through the lush arrangements of Claus Ogerman, amplifying the cinematic romanticism that became part of her signature. Live in Paris (2002) captured her touring band's elasticity and poise and won another Grammy, underscoring her credibility as a pianist-singer with bona fide jazz chops.

Personal loss marked this period as well. The death of her mother, Adella, in 2002 shaped the introspective tone of The Girl in the Other Room (2004), which Krall co-wrote in part with her future husband, the songwriter and bandleader Elvis Costello. The album, produced with LiPuma, balanced originals and reimagined covers and revealed a songwriter's perspective within her jazz vocabulary.

Evolution, Collaboration, and Range
From This Moment On (2006) paired Krall with the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, reconnecting her with John Clayton and Jeff Hamilton in a robust big-band setting that contrasted neatly with her trio work. Quiet Nights (2009) drew on the bossa nova tradition, again with the orchestral sensibilities associated with Claus Ogerman, and highlighted Krall's affinity for understated rhythmic sway.

Krall's collaborative instincts reached beyond her own albums. She and her working band were central to Paul McCartney's standards project, Kisses on the Bottom (2012), produced by Tommy LiPuma, with Krall's pianism and taste informing the album's elegant restraint. That same year, she released Glad Rag Doll, produced by T Bone Burnett, which explored early 20th-century material through a roots-inflected lens, proof of her comfort reframing the past without sentimentality. Wallflower (2015), produced by David Foster, reinterpreted pop and singer-songwriter repertoire, extending her reach to listeners who might have encountered her first through the Great American Songbook.

Turn Up the Quiet (2017) brought Krall back into her most natural habitat: small, swinging ensembles with deluxe production and immaculate repertoire choices, completed with Tommy LiPuma shortly before his passing. This return-to-form reaffirmed the pianist-singer balance at the core of her artistry. Love Is Here to Stay (2018), a duet album with Tony Bennett built around the Gershwin songbook, placed her in conversation with one of popular music's defining interpreters, emphasizing understatement, time feel, and mutual respect. This Dream of You (2020), assembled from the 2016, 2017 sessions she recorded with LiPuma, served as both a continuation of their collaborative arc and an affectionate coda, featuring longtime associates such as guitarist Anthony Wilson along with rhythm-section partners whose interplay has supported Krall for decades.

Personal Life
Krall married Elvis Costello in 2003 in a ceremony held at the home of Elton John, an event that symbolically united jazz, pop, and rock communities. The couple welcomed twin sons, Dexter and Frank, in 2006. Costello's lyrical sensibility and adventurous taste have occasionally intersected with Krall's projects, most notably in the writing for The Girl in the Other Room, while both artists have sustained independent careers marked by curiosity and stylistic breadth.

Artistry and Influence
Krall's artistry rests on a rare dual command: she is a pianist whose touch and voicings reveal deep study and a singer whose contralto suggests intimacy without affectation. Influenced by Nat King Cole's effortless phrasing and trio architecture, by Oscar Peterson's rhythmic drive, and by Bill Evans's harmonic delicacy, she synthesizes tradition into something contemporary and personal. In trio contexts with players such as John Clayton, Jeff Hamilton, Christian McBride, and Anthony Wilson, she favors space, elastic tempo, and conversational dynamics. In orchestral settings with Claus Ogerman or under the production guidance of Tommy LiPuma and David Foster, she retains a clear center, letting arrangements frame rather than overwhelm the lyric.

Her repertory choices demonstrate a curator's ear. She revisits standards not as museum pieces but as living texts, and she has shown equal comfort with Brazilian song, early jazz, the American and Canadian singer-songwriter canon, and filmic balladry. That adaptability, coupled with a commitment to jazz time feel and melodic clarity, has made her one of the few jazz artists to achieve sustained mainstream visibility without conceding the music's core values.

Recognition and Philanthropy
Krall has earned multiple Juno Awards and Grammy Awards, with several albums topping jazz charts internationally and expanding the audience for acoustic, songbook-centered jazz. She was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada and received the Order of British Columbia, acknowledgments that recognize both her musical achievement and her role as a cultural ambassador. She is also a member of Canada's Walk of Fame.

Through the Diana Krall Foundation, named in tribute to the values instilled by her parents and especially inspired by her mother, she has supported music education and health-related causes, including efforts connected to cancer care. Benefit concerts and targeted grants have allowed her to channel professional success into opportunities for young musicians and into community support across British Columbia and beyond.

Legacy
Diana Krall stands as one of the most influential jazz musicians of her generation, not only a best-selling artist but a reference point for what it means to balance tradition, individuality, and cross-genre appeal. Central to that legacy are the mentors and collaborators who helped shape it: Ray Brown and Jimmy Rowles in her formative years; Tommy LiPuma as a producer and champion; Claus Ogerman as an orchestrator of uncommon sensitivity; trio and ensemble partners like John Clayton, Jeff Hamilton, Russell Malone, Christian McBride, and Anthony Wilson; and cross-genre colleagues such as Paul McCartney, Tony Bennett, and T Bone Burnett. Her partnership with Elvis Costello has provided an additional creative dimension, enriching her songwriting and narrative perspective.

From Nanaimo's local stages to concert halls around the world, Krall has made a persuasive case for the enduring vitality of standards and jazz craft. She has done so through a pianistic voice that prizes harmonic clarity and rhythmic poise, a vocal delivery that draws listeners close, and a catalog that, across intimate trio dates and lush orchestral projects, treats songs as vehicles for both memory and revelation.

Our collection contains 16 quotes who is written by Diana, under the main topics: Music - Love - Deep - Art - Movie.