Review & setlist: Diana Krall brought a special kind of magic to The Cabot

Krall, with bassist John Clayton, brought all of her prodigious piano and vocal talents to bear in Beverly.

Jazz pianist and singer Diana Krall was in Beverly Saturday night. AP Photo/Claude Paris, FIle

March 29, 2026 | 1:29 PM

3 minutes to read

Diana Krall at The Cabot, Beverly, Saturday, March 28, 2026.

Like Nat King Cole, who she saluted on her 1996 tribute album All For You, Diana Krall is so good a singer that she likely would have become a star in the jazz world had she never touched a piano, and so formidable a pianist that she likely would have become a star in the jazz world had she never stepped in front of a microphone.

If it feels unfair that she should have both sides covered so masterfully, the upside is performances like the one she delivered Saturday at the Cabot in Beverly. Perched at her Steinway and accompanied only by bassist John Clayton, she had nowhere to hide, and no reason to.

Krall started by plinking out a few tentative notes before Clayton’s bass stepped into action and her husky alto took over on “Almost Like Being In Love.” Largely holding back from her piano as she delivered her vocal, she provided light chording as Clayton’s solo walked around the melody, and then she locked in with a clear and direct solo of her own. For “Just You, Just Me,” she set the tone and then let her bassist run with it, with the two of them unobtrusively taking off like a shot during the interlude and then just as unobtrusively slipping in and out of double time throughout.

It was one of several moments throughout the 85-minute concert that seemed like magic tricks happening in plain sight. Krall was able to inhabit contradictions with ease on the simultaneously lighthearted and heartbreaking character study of “Mrs. Wonderly,” which was somehow expansive but still intimate.

And even though it was just the two of them on stage, she and Clayton were effectively a trio, with Krall’s piano and voice barely meeting. Even when she did accompany herself, as in “Isn’t This A Lovely Day?,” her playing remained sparse until she was free not to sing, at which point her deftness as a player came to the fore.

That led to moments like midway through “All Or Nothing At All,” when she finally addressed her piano with a solo that fairly danced, as well as her gently shrugging “I don’t know what the hell that was” once she’d finished the playful, striding intro to “Like Someone In Love” and was moving into her vocal.

Befitting a mentorship that began when she was 19 and developed into becoming peers in the decades since, Krall and Clayton’s interplay was impeccable, bordering on telepathic at times. They darted around each other during “Let’s Fall In Love” and synched up a few times during their solos in “I Just Found Out About Love,” counting out the silent beats together just before jumping back in together to bring it to a close.

And if Krall’s voice has always been husky, at the Cabot it became whispery and more direct. Written as a letter recounting unremarkable doings, “P.S. I Love You” was utterly mundane and utterly sultry, and her delivery on “You Call It Madness (But I Call It Love)” fell just this side of torch. “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” meanwhile, was dreamy and blazingly, romantically confident, no longer a song about helplessness in her hands but a command; without changing a word, she switched the target of the line “Don’t you know, little fool, you never can win” from herself to the person she was singing to.

That conviction kept the blood pumping even during the slower, softer songs, to say nothing of the more uptempo material. Krall and Clayton closed with “Come Dance With Me,” which was friskier than most of what had led up to it. And as the singer embarked on a solo with stabbing, eager fingers, she could be heard muttering an alternate melody off-mic, as if her piano and her voice both heard the appeal of the song’s title and couldn’t help but say yes.

Setlist for Diana Krall at the Cabot, Beverly, March 28, 2026

Almost Like Being In Love (Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe cover)
Let’s Fall In Love (Ted Koehler and Harold Arlen cover)
Just You, Just Me (Raymond Klages and Jesse Greer cover)
You Call It Madness (But I Call It Love) (Russ Columbo cover)
All Or Nothing At All (Frank Sinatra and Harry James and his Orchestra cover)
I’ve Got You Under My Skin (Virginia Bruce cover)
Like Someone In Love (Dinah Shore cover)
Junk (Paul McCartney cover)
Mrs. Wonderly
Isn’t This A Lovely Day? (Fred Astaire cover)
Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me (Cootie Williams cover)
I Just Found Out About Love (Harold Adamson and Jimmy McHugh cover)

ENCORE:

P.S. I Love You (Rudy Vallée cover)
Come Dance With Me (Frank Sinatra cover)

Marc Hirsh can be reached at [email protected] or on Bluesky @spacecitymarc.bsky.social.

Marc Hirsh is a music critic who covers a wide variety of genres, including pop, rock, hip-hop, country and jazz.

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