Diana Krall

Diana Krall, a famed pianist and singer from Canada, was born on November 16, 1964. The girl could not but like music since her parents were professional pianists and her grandmother was a dancer. She was only four when she first sat at the piano. Soon, Diana would not only play, but also sing to what she was playing. The first band Diana joined was her school jazz band. At that time, she was extremely fond of Sting and R&B performers. Krall gave her first professional concert when she was fifteen. Talented and committed, she started her music career playing weekends at local bars. In 1981, Diana won a jazz contest in Vancouver and earned a grant to study music in the States. In two years, she came home to continue playing jazz at clubs. Experienced colleagues saw in the young girl more than just an average musician and persuaded her to go to Los Angeles and improve her vocal skills.

Initially, Diana Krall did not consider her singing an essential part of her shows. However, as soon as she improved this aspect, her concerts started gathering much more people than even before. With a top quality training obtained in Los Angeles, at the age of twenty, the artist once again returned to her homeland. After she settled down in Toronto, Diana grew into a respected professional song writer and performer. Six years later, Krall crossed the border one more time and after unlucky efforts to find a job in New York, she moved to Boston to give concerts along with a trio of instrumentalists. Krall was happy enough to cooperate with celebrated performers and a skilled producer to prepare her 1994 debut album under the title Only Trust Your Heart. In two years, the singer released her sophomore long player, All for You, that brought her the first Grammy nomination, which was quite an unexpected event for a non-mainstream genre work. This album vividly showcased Diana’s abilities to play excellently both her own songs and hits of other musicians. The subsequent studio work, called Love Scenes, that saw light in 1997, featured ballad-oriented material.

Each fresh album by Krall was less influenced by any other performers and better revealed the singer’s unique approach. Many assumed that she finally established her own easy recognizable style after she delivered a superb album entitled as When I Look into Your Eyes. It topped the Billboard jazz charts for more than a year and earned Diana a Grammy win. Even the then US president, Bill Clinton, himself praised this work so much that he even sent her his personal congratulation letter. This made Krall a figure decorating many big magazines and appearing in many TV shows. The very fact of press and public attention focused on a jazz performer was totally unique. Diana took it like a professional and kept working hard. The 2002 full length album, Live in Paris, again collected critical acclaim. There were those journalists who proclaimed her the new Ella Fitzgerald, a fact sufficient to evaluate the scales of the singer’s prominence. After that, Krall decided to immerse into experimenting with a more pop-oriented segment of jazz. Her next albums found her more supporters, but the level of the singer’s singing and piano playing grew even higher. In spring 2009, Krall released Quiet Nights, a calm relaxing music for those who like classic jazz and enjoy it in a contemporary form.