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• Ms. Krall's official site
• Article on Ms. Krall
• Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation
• Review of "From This Moment On"

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Tavis: (Laugh) I'm pleased to welcome Grammy-winning artist Diana Krall to this program. Her latest CD is her tenth, and is once again receiving great reviews. The disc is called 'From This Moment On.' Later on, she'll perform a song from the CD, which we cannot wait to hear. But in the meantime, Diana Krall, nice to see you.

Diana Krall: Nice to see you, too.

Tavis: Nice to see all of you. (Laugh)

Krall: Yeah. (Laugh) There's a lot right now.

Tavis: Yeah, there's a lot. So everybody, I think, has heard this story. For those who have not, you are having your first babies.

Krall: Yes.

Tavis: Plural.

Krall: Yes, twins.

Tavis: Twins.

Krall: Mm hmm.

Tavis: How's it coming?

Krall: It's good. I'm a little slower and bigger (laugh) at the moment. But put your vanity aside, and the most important thing is the health of the babies and my health.

Tavis: We had a wonderful time with your husband, Elvis Costello, and Mr. Toussaint. You saw that conversation?

Krall: Yes I did.

Tavis: It was a great conversation.

Krall: It was wonderful.

Tavis: Yeah. We enjoyed it so much; we broadcast it right around a couple weeks ago.

Krall: It was very good. And I love Alan. He's such a gentleman. And I got a chance to see the shows, and they were just phenomenal. It was just extraordinary.

Tavis: You saw the show, so I ask Elvis when are the two of you gonna collaborate. And he said well, there's more than (laugh) one way to collaborate. Now I see what he was talking about.

Krall: That was very sweet, because he knew at that time, and we couldn't tell anybody, 'cause it was too early.

Tavis: Right.

Krall: But that was really sweet. When we saw that back, we both laughed. We thought that was great.

Tavis: (Laugh) When he said there's more than one way to collaborate, when you walked out I was like, okay, I get it now. He was very coy about that.

Krall: Yes.

Tavis: Very coy about that. This is, like, number 10. This is the tenth CD.

Krall: It's the tenth CD, yeah.

Tavis: That's amazing. I have all your stuff, but the time, like, flies. It had not occurred to me, I had no idea that we were up to 10 already.

Krall: Neither did I.

Tavis: You didn't, either?

Krall: (Laugh) Well, I wasn't really counting, but yeah, that's a lot for me.

Tavis: How do you think your music, your style, your sound, has changed, your voice, over that 10-CD career?

Krall: Well right now, my voice is different and everything's different because I'm pregnant with twins, so I don't have as much breath as I usually do performing live. But I think I'm more relaxed in general, and more settled in myself. 'Cause I started singing quite late. I didn't really start feeling comfortable with my voice until about the year 2000, 2001. I started feeling more and more comfortable being - that's why 'The Look Of Love' was so important to me, because I really focused on my singing, rather than just sort of singing and playing piano both. But I feel more settled in accepting how I sing and who I am. I'm always striving to get better. But I'm more accepting.

Tavis: It's strange to hear you say that you only got settled with your voice at this particular point, when the rest of us were totally digging what you were doing already. But what brought about that peace that you have with your own style, your own sound?

Krall: I don't know, maybe just age and just not caring about focusing on trying to be a singer like somebody else, but just accepting myself and how I sing, and enjoying myself. I think that had a lot to do with it, and just finding joy in it. And I think that came along with 'The Girl In The Other Room.' I think that was probably the most important album for me in my career. Because it forced me to do a lot of soul-searching.

I was in a position I'd never been in before. I'd lost my mom, and I wasn't able to express myself through the music that I loved. The music that was Cole Porter and George Gershwin, and jazz standards, singing through other people's words and music. So I collaborated with Elvis Costello (laugh) musically, and started writing. And that gave me the opportunity to really do some serious soul searching and have the courage to do that.

And I couldn't have this album now so joyfully if I hadn't gone into exploring my own feelings in writing. It was a hard thing to do. More difficult to do after than when I was in it. And when I was in it, it was very cathartic. But afterwards to talk about it, it was easier to sing about my private life, my personal life, and experiences than to talk about it afterwards. I found that more stressful.

Tavis: That's fascinating. Al Jarreau once told me that he believes that each of us, certainly jazz artists, but he was making a broader point, not just about jazz artists, but about people in general. So Jarreau says to me one day, Diana, that he thinks that each of us has a thumbprint on our throat. I love the way he phrased that. We all, obviously, have a thumbprint that makes us uniquely different as human beings.

But he argues in addition to that the thumbprint here, that we have thumbprints on our throat, and each of us has to find our own voice. That's true for musicians; that's true for those of us who live regular lives. You gotta find your own voice in the world. I was fascinated by that, and I love his formulation on that. How did you go about finding your own jazz voice? To your earlier point, that you stop trying to sound like somebody else, but how does one go about, when there's so much beauty in jazz, and so many greats that have gone before you, how do you come along at this point in time in modernity, and discover your own thumbprint on your throat?

Krall: At first it's quite humbling. It's a combination of being very humbled by the people that created this art form. Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole. And intimidated, 'cause I get asked a lot how can you do this when the great artists have done this? But you turn all of that into inspiration, and you find your own place in it. And you'll never achieve what they achieved or be Ella Fitzgerald, or be a Sarah Vaughan or a Carmen McRae, or people that you admire.

As a pianist, for me it was Nat Cole and Oscar Peterson as well as Bill Evans. But that's what keeps you striving, and it's this divine dissatisfaction that keeps us going as artists. So you're never satisfied, but it's so inspiring, you have to do it. You have to. And I think as a child, I was in the school choir. And I auditioned, and being put in sort of a role of the typical I must audition for the soprano or the alto part, and I didn't pass the audition 'cause I didn't sing high enough.

And it gave me a bit of a complex for a while. Instead of singing with the boys, 'cause I had a low voice, (laugh) I had a low voice, even as a 12 year old, probably. But to be yourself. Just to be yourself. But that takes a long time, because there are so many great artists and peers that I admire, as well. I admire great singers like Diane Reeves and Cassandra Wilson. But I think it's not thinking so much.

I didn't focus on one singer. I focused on Nat King Cole, Johnny Hartman, Frank Sinatra, and pianists. So I wasn't really trying to emulate one singer. When I first started out, I was trying to sound like Ernestine Anderson. She was my favorite singer, and still is one of my favorite singers.

Tavis: I'm always fascinated by those stories, and I think I'm fascinated and I love them because they're so empowering, to hear Diana Krall admit, or to say on national television, I didn't pass my choir audition.

Krall: No, and I shut my mouth for, like, 10 years after that. (Laugh)

Tavis: But it all worked out, so...

Krall: And I'm so careful about that. (Laugh)

Tavis: I didn't pass my choir audition on my tenth CD.

Krall: Yes, but I don't wanna hurt the choir director who didn't (unintelligible), because I think that was a bit of a sensitive subject. (Laugh) But no, I still can remember as a child looking at the window and going (makes noise), trying to hit the high notes, and I just couldn't do it. And I just didn't get into the youth choir. But that's okay. (Laugh)

Tavis: Tell me right quick about the new CD. Some of these songs I heard that you've been holding in your hip pocket for a while.

Krall: Yeah.

Tavis: Yeah.

Krall: Well, I think that we always save some songs that we would like to do. I have lots of songs that I love that I wouldn't necessarily attempt, or that wouldn't be right for me. But there's some things that you try that it just takes a while for it to click. Like for instance, 'Exactly Like You.' The arrangement we did was basically right from Nat King Cole, but I also learned it from listening to Ray Brown and other recordings.

But now the lyrics have changed for me a little bit, so when I sing I know why my mother taught me to be true, I do think of my mother in some way. So every song I choose, I have to find a story in. Almost like a character in a great play, or relate to it somehow from personal experience, or just imagination.

Tavis: The new CD from Diana Krall, 'From This Moment On.' And we are delighted to have her here, more delighted that in just a moment, she will perform with her band one of the new tracks on the new CD, 'From This Moment On.' Diana, nice to see you.

Krall: Yeah, always nice to talk with you, Tavis.

Tavis: Congratulations. I'm glad to see you all the time.

Krall: Thank you so much.

Tavis: It's my pleasure.

Krall: For having us.

Tavis: My pleasure. (Laugh) Stay with us. Diana in a moment.

From her acclaimed new disc 'From This Moment On,' here is Diana Krall performing 'Come Dance With Me.' Enjoy. Good night from Los Angeles, and keep the faith.