Canadian pianist and singer Diana Krall made her name by immersing herself in the classic jazz vocal songbook, buoyed by a scholarship to Berklee and encouragement from the great jazz bassist Ray Brown. The daughter of a record collecting, stride-piano playing father, she’d grown up listening to Bing and Ella and practicing along to Fats Waller; aged 19, on Brown’s say-so, she apprenticed herself to pianist and former Billie Holiday accompanist, Jimmy Rowles. “I studied with the old jazz guys, listened to their stories,” she once told me, and her commitment to the form has never wavered.
When she started singing the standards, slowing them down, reconfiguring them to find new meaning, she came in with genuine respect. “They’re like Shakespeare’s sonnets, beautiful forever,” she also said; her originals – hers and her co-writes with husband Elvis Costello – feature similar elegance and panache. Krall’s already vast, five-time Grammy-studded oeuvre continues to expand, embracing and celebrating old school jazz and spanning everything from intimate acoustics and lush orchestral strings to folk, rock, pop and more.
After 15 studio albums and assorted other releases, Krall continues to go her own way. Still, make no mistake, as some people do: Jazz has her heart.
Here are five of her best records from the last two decades.
The Look of Love (2001)
Krall was a jazz pin-up girl with five albums under her belt – among them a successful tribute album to the Nat King Cole trio – when she sashayed coolly into the Noughties with this oh-so-polished collection of Songbook gems. Orchestral flute-and-string vibes lend majesty to those expressive vocals, and piano interludes woven into the likes of “The Night We Called It A Day” hold attention. Krall’s sumptuous take on evergreen Spanish-language bolero “Bésame Mucho”, a massive hit for the Buena Vista Social Club, is for swooning to.
Live in Paris (2002)
Confirming Krall’s reputation as a performer of remarkable intensity, this live recording before a sell-out crowd at the Paris Olympia finds her accompanied by the Orchestre Symphonique Européen, Paris Jazz Big Band and collaborators including Michael Brecker on sax and Christian McBride on bass, all on point: swinging, hypnotising, owning it. 11 live standards include “Fly Me To the Moon”, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” and Joni Mitchell’s gorgeous “A Case of You”. The French audience feels spellbound, and no wonder.
From This Moment On (2006)
Krall re-embraces her roots on an album co-produced with Tommy LiPuma in the company of the Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra and a trio including Anthony Wilson (guitar), Jeff Hamilton (drums) and John Clayton (upright bass). With a title borrowed from Cole Porter’s romantic ode to great expectations (“No more blue songs/Only whoop-de-doo songs”), the album’s 11 standards form an upbeat, cohesive whole.
Wallflower (2015)
This collection of rock and pop covers speaks to Krall’s love of classic Seventies ballads. The Eagles’ “Desperado” is here, and “California Dreamin'” by the Mamas & The Papas. Michael Bublé is in the house for a duet on Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again, Naturally”, and there’s a reading of a lovely, previously unreleased Paul McCartney song, “I’ll Take You Home Tonight”. The title track by Dylan is a blinder.
This Dream of You (2020)
Krall’s most recent release is a refined collection of songs cherry-picked from her final recordings with late friend and longtime producer LiPuma (recordings that also fed her fabulous 2017 album “Turn Up the Quiet”). Opener “But Beautiful”, their last-ever collaboration, comes wrapped in subtle string arrangements courtesy of Alan Broadbent, whose transcriptions also grace “Autumn in New York” and who plays piano on two piano-vocal duets. Bob Dylan’s song of lost love, the title tune, features hot shots including Marc Ribot on guitar. Late night cool has never sounded so classy.
Jane Cornwell is an Australian-born, London-based writer on arts, travel and music for publications and platforms in the UK and Australia, including Songlines and Jazzwise. She’s the former jazz critic of the London Evening Standard.
Header image: Diana Krall. Photo: Mary McCartney/Verve Records.