Diana Krall at The Music Center at Strathmore

Diana Krall
The Music Center at Strathmore
North Bethesda, MD
March 26, 2026

Downsizing gets a bad name these days, but when Diana Krall reduced the big stage at the Strathmore Music Center in North Bethesda, MD., to the intimate scale of a smoky piano bar, nobody in the sold-out crowd was complaining. Handsomely attired in a simple black suit and silver slippers, the golden-maned singer made it clear why she's been one of the jazz world's most popular performers for three decades now. The Great American Songbook was never in better hands.

Kicking things off with the Lerner & Loewe standard, "Almost Like Being in Love," renowned double bassist John Clayton, who's known Krall since the very beginning of her career, set a deep groove for the tune's melody line. Krall's throaty vocals meandered through the lyric and then joined Clayton on the piano, swinging the tune. The dynamic duo traded fours, a format they'd repeat throughout the evening, playfully punching and counter-punching through the classic chart.

Love remained in the air for a languid discourse on the {Harold Arlen} standard "Let's Fall in Love," arranged by Clayton and sung by Krall to another bass solo, this time punctuated by staccato figures on the keyboard. Krall stomped around the melody until winding up back at the lyric and a smoothly bowed bass coda. Following the tune, Clayton gave Krall a breather as he recounted the singer's journey from jazz camp kid discovered by drummer Jeff Hamilton to her first album, produced in LA by Hamilton and Clayton, his friend and colleague.

After the narrative came the Cole Porter chestnut, "I've Got You Under My Skin," with more of the same call and response between the two musicians. From there, the combo swung the Frank Sinatra staple "All of Me," with Krall pushing a barrelhouse piano, paying homage to Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday with her song styling. {Nat "King" Cole} got the next tip of the cap in Krall's haunting rendition of "You Call It Madness (But I Call It Love)," a sweet piano intro and moody bass bowing solo complementing the torch song's lyric.

You can't open up the Songbook without tripping over Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn. Krall and Clayton did the songwriters justice with their bluesy version of "Come Dance With Me," Krall's big muscular chords racing Clayton to the end of a stanza. Things got poignant yet again on "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face," which Krall began fleetingly, her vocal dropping down almost to a whisper. Next up, "All or Nothing At All" once began with an impressive solo bass accompaniment on the swinging standard.

Krall proved her boogie woogie chops on the Fats Waller hit "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter," Clayton slapping the bass as the duo soloed up and down their instruments with aplomb. Quite a mood change, then, when they followed with the elegiac "Mrs Wonderly"—a Krall favorite—Clayton gliding his bow over his instrument to give the tune a string quartet feel. Things picked back up with "Just You, Just Me" as the artists took the cut time route to a swinging conclusion. "Fly Me to the Moon" and the Burt Bacharach—Hal David hit, "The Look Of Love," made for a welcome encore before the evening drew to a close.

Perhaps it was the lighting: the footlights and stand lights arranged around the piano like an old-fashioned photo shoot. Perhaps it was the crimson drape and smoky effects. Whatever the source, Krall and Clayton turned in a wonderful performance, celebrating all the great piano bars of years passed and present. Let's all make a point to get back to one and raise a toast to John Clayton and Diana Krall.

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