Sir Elton John will welcome Grammy-winning performer Diana Krall as his special musical guest for the Elton John AIDS Foundation's 15th annual fall gala, An Enduring Vision, on Wednesday, November 2, 2016, at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City.
“I’m so thrilled Diana will be joining us for our fall gala this year,” said Elton John. “Diana is an extraordinary performer and a dear personal friend, and I’m thrilled beyond belief to welcome an artist of her caliber to our annual New York event.”
Emmy award-winning producer and popular talk show host Andy Cohen will emcee the evening. EJAF will honor internationally-renowned philanthropists Frank Giustra and Steve Tisch with the Foundation’s Enduring Vision Award and present its second Founder’s Award to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Diana Krall took the jazz world by storm in the late ‘90s. By the turn of the century she was firmly established as one of the biggest sellers in jazz. Her 1996 album, All for You, was a Nat King Cole tribute that showed the singer/pianist’s roots, and since then she has stayed fairly close to that tradition-minded mode, with wildly successful results. When I Look in Your Eyes followed in 1999. Whatever renown she had earned over the years for her work exploded with this album, which became an international best-seller and earned her a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance. It was also the first jazz album to be nominated for Album of the Year in 25 years.
In 2001 she released The Look of Love, which topped the Billboard charts and went quintuple platinum in Canada, the first by a Canadian jazz artist to do so. The album also helped Diana win three Junos in 2002, taking home awards for Artist of the Year, Album of the Year, and Best Vocal Jazz Album of the Year. Then her Live from Paris (2002) album won a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album.
In 2003, Diana married iconic British rock musician Elvis Costello. A year later, she issued The Girl in the Other Room, which covered a few standards and also included original material – some co-written by Costello – for the first time in her career. More albums following, including From This Moment On (2006), Quiet Nights (2009), which debuted at number three on the Billboard Top 200, and Glad Rag Doll (2012), a collection of early jazz and ragtime tunes from the ‘20s and ’30s produced by T-Bone Burnett. In her most recent album Wallflower (2015), Diana covered a selection of pop songs from the ’60s onward by Bob Dylan, Elton John, Gilbert O’Sullivan, and the Eagles, all of whom had inspired her in her childhood.
or ticket information, please contact Andreas Schwarz at the Elton John AIDS Foundation, 212.219.0670 or andreas.schwarz@ejaf.org.
