Diana Krall to Play in Omaha on International Jazz Day, 4/30

Diana Krall, jazz pianist and singer and five-time Grammy Award-winner, brings her "Glad Rag Doll" tour to Omaha's Orpheum Theater, Tuesday, April 30, 2013 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets for the concert, presented by Omaha Performing Arts, start at $50 and are available to purchase online at TicketOmaha.com, by calling 402-345-0606 or at the Ticket Omaha office at the Holland Performing Arts Center, 13th and Douglas streets.

The concert has been officially registered as an International Jazz Day event - the only Nebraska event registered. Organizers for the world-wide celebration set a goal to have an event registered in all 50 states. Omaha Performing Arts is in great company with more than 150 countries and 300+ events officially registered worldwide from performing arts venues, museums, libraries and more.

Originally from British Columbia, Diana Krall began her musical journey at age 4 with classical piano lessons and continued her studies with her high school jazz band. Her biggest musical influence was her father, a pianist with an extensive record collection. At age 15, Krall began performing professionally as a jazz pianist, and in 1981, she won a Vancouver Jazz Festival scholarship to study at Berklee College of Music in Boston.

With her pre-bop piano style, cool but sensual singing and photogenic looks, Krall took the jazz world by storm in the late '90s. By 2000, she was firmly established as one of

the top-selling musicians in jazz. Her 1996 album All for You was a Nat King Cole tribute that showed the singer/pianist's roots. Since then she has stayed fairly close to that traditional mode, with wildly successful results.

In 1999, Krall released When I Look in Your Eyes, which became an international best-seller and earned her a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance. It also was the first jazz album to be nominated for Album of the Year in 25 years.

Krall's extraordinary new album, Glad Rag Doll, is an exhilarating and adventurous exploration of old music with new sounds, new instrumentation and new musicians. Krall brings a sense of mischief, humor and a renewed sense of tenderness and intimacy to this album. It is a Vaudeville of Krall's own imagining, and is both a major departure and a natural progression for the gifted musician. Krall simply calls the album, "a song and dance record."

If any of these songs could be identified as "'20s or '30s music," then they are '20s or '30s songs as imagined for the 21st Century. "We all just went in there as if the songs were written yesterday. I didn't want to make a period piece or nostalgia record," said Krall. In fact, these are songs that Krall has spent a lifetime contemplating. Both her childhood home and her current address are stacked with 78rpm records and song folios filled with precious and unpolished gems, songs that have not worn out their luster from repetition.

Working for the first time with renowned producer T-Bone Burnett and engineer Mike Piersante, Krall solidifies her position as the world's top-selling jazz artist with Glad Rag Doll, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard Traditional Jazz chart - Krall's 10th consecutive spot at the top -- and #6 on the Billboard 200, her fifth consecutive top 10 debut.