Diana Krall has shown the world that a jazz musician can enjoy mass appeal without sacrificing their jazz foundation. Not only has the Canadian singer and acoustic pianist become a top-selling artist on the Verve roster, but she has become jazz’s top-selling vocalist as well. She is a crossover phenomenon who has remained faithful to her roots.
Krall began studying the piano when she was only four. She was raised on jazz, and by the time she was 15, was performing standards in a local restaurant/bar. Krall was still a teenager when she was awarded a scholarship to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. After two years in Boston, she moved to Los Angeles, where she met some jazz heavyweights, including John Clayton, Jimmy Rowles and the late bassist Ray Brown (who gave her a great deal of encouragement and ended up playing on some of her 1990s albums). Krall moved to Toronto, and in 1993, Montreal-based Justin Time Records released her debut album, Stepping Out.
In 1998 and 1999, her album When I Look in Your Eyes achieved astounding success, spending 52 weeks in the #1 position on Billboard’s jazz chart and winning two Grammys. When I Look in Your Eyes went platinum in the United States, double platinum in Canada, platinum in Portugal and gold in France. In 2000, it won a Canadian JUNO Award for Best Vocal Jazz Album.
When The Look of Love was released in September 2001, it entered the Billboard 200 at #9 and sold 95,000 copies in the U.S. alone in its first week. The album went quadruple platinum in Canada; platinum in Australia, New Zealand, Poland and Portugal; and gold in France, Singapore and England. It earned Krall three Juno Awards for Best Artist, Best Album and Best Vocal Jazz Album. On March 31st, 2009, Diana Krall released her tenth studio album, Quiet Nights.
