From This Moment On

“This album coincides with a happier time in my life. I think it’s very obvious in the music. It reflects how I’m feeling now, the joy that I have in my marriage and family, and hopefully in the future.”

It had only been a few days since singer and pianist Diana Krall publicly announced that she and husband Elvis Costello were expecting their first child. Her remarks may have primarily focused on her upcoming album, but it was easy to discern the rosy glow as she discussed imminent arrivals, and how she came up with the name for one of them.

“I already knew before we went into the studio the title of the record. I definitely knew it was going to be From This Moment On.”

Cole Porter’s romantic ode to great expectations (with its hip, heartening couplet, “No more blue songs/Only whoop-dee-doo songs”) could not be more apt a title track for Krall’s tenth album. From This Moment On is an eleven-song collection that captures the Canadian-born sensation in full swing, in great company, and at the top of her game. It could also be called her strongest, most cohesive release to date.

Krall is the first to admit that the album’s marked, upbeat theme was not originally her intention (“I never try to link tunes together or find songs that work together as a whole. It happens organically in the recording process, or not at all.”) But she does assume credit for knowing the songs she would be recording when she, her quartet and the Clayton/Hamilton Jazz Orchestra assembled for two weeks in Los Angeles’s famed Capitol Studios this spring.