- Born
- Birth nameDiana Jean Krall
- Height5′ 7¾″ (1.72 m)
- Diana Jean Krall was born in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada, to Adella A. (Wende), an elementary school teacher, and Stephen James Krall, an accountant. She has Czech, German, English, and Scottish ancestry. Krall was raised in Nanaimo, a small community on Vancouver Island, where she began performing professionally at age 15 as a jazz pianist. In 1981, Diana won a Vancouver Jazz Festival scholarship to study at Berklee College of Music in Boston and, after a year and a half of serious study, she returned to British Columbia. Renowned bassist Ray Brown heard her playing one night in Nanaimo and convinced Diana to move to Los Angeles where she obtained a Canadian Arts Council grant to study with Jimmy Rowles. Jimmy encouraged Diana to explore her vocals to supplement her already blossoming piano skills. With several successful CDs to her credit, Diana has won numerous awards including Canada's Juno Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album (2000) and a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance (2000). She received the Order of British Columbia in 2000 for being a good-will ambassador for British Columbia and epitomizing Canadian culture. The greatest talent in the jazz field to come along in a generation, she frequently acknowledges her roots in Nanaimo where she began. She epitomizes Canadian culture and is an outstanding citizen and good-will ambassador for British Columbia.- IMDb Mini Biography By: arthur-23 <arthur100@iname.com>
- SpouseElvis Costello(December 6, 2003 - present) (2 children)
- Has twin sons, Dexter Henry Lorcan and Frank Harlan James, born December 6, 2006, with husband Elvis Costello.
- She was awarded the OBC (Member of the Order of British Columbia) on an unknown date of 2000 and the OC (Officer of the Order of Canada) on 25 June 2005 for her services to Music and Charities.
- May 2003 - announced engagement to singer Elvis Costello.
- Won the Grammy for "Jazz Vocal Album Of The Year" in 1999. Album title was "When I Look Into Your Eyes."
- February 2003 - "Live In Paris" wins her a Grammy for Best Vocal Jazz Album of the Year.
- I love everything about her: her elegance, her wit. And she is one of the greatest influences in what I do as an artist. (on her idol Peggy Lee)
- [on Tony Bennett] We have continual arguments about whether rock 'n' roll swings, which of course it absolutely does. I have a different view of the Great American Songbook than Tony. It has Willie Dixon and Hank Williams in it. But I totally respect that, for Tony, it begins and ends when it does. Depending on where you started from, certain kinds of music must seem horrifying.
- [on her family] They were really poor - they're coal miners - but they had a piano, so everybody played and I think my dad started taking some of the collection money on the way to church and buying 78s. That music was what they listened to, and people came over because they couldn't afford to go out. Everyone came to their house and brought bottles - whatever they had. I have tapes of it too, recordings of all of us singing together.
- I was looking at all the pictures of the Ziegfeld Follies and [thinking about] how a lot of those girls perished, really. That's why I didn't want to do this kind of flapper, get-your-ukelele-thing, because there's a darkness to it, a tragic element.
- We all want to be astronauts or rock stars when we grow up, right? I mean, I always wanted to be an astronaut. My Confirmation day was spent building a rocket. I built it out of the kit and read 'Carrying the Fire'. I had a chance to meet Neil Armstrong and his family on the fortieth anniversary of the moon landing.
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