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THE SECRET LIFE OF DIANA KRALL (p. 2 of 3)

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The two began dating before the Grammys last year, then married in England in December. Observe them together for a few minutes, and you’ll see two kids besotted with each other, giggling over private jokes, the world their playground. It is the only time, except when she is onstage – safely behind the piano, losing herself in the middle of an improvisation – that Krall really lets go.

She laughs now about the fact that she wasn’t that familiar with Costello’s music before they met. "People would hate me for that: ‘Argggh! How could she not know everything?’ But because of that, I got to know him as a person."

Naturally, she’s come to respect her new husband’s songwriting craftsmanship. "It’s pretty damn exciting to be writing with Elvis Costello," she continues. "I’ve learned a lot. I feel almost like a 16-year-old going through a learning process because he’s pushed me, and where I felt like I was going to give up – ‘I can’t do it, it’s frustrating, I’m not good enough’ – he’s like, ‘No, let’s just keep going. We’ll get it.’ It’s pretty wonderful to have that."

Next door is another room that houses Costello’s own music. His latest album, North, resonates with his discovery of Krall and Canada. "Give me the ice and snow…/ Let me go north," he sings on the spartan title track. She returns the sentiment on Girl, recording a languorous and full-throated "Almost Blue," which Costello originally wrote for Chet Baker. Krall’s version, which embraces the song’s supple romantic longing, begins with a quietly jaw-dropping progression of complex harmonies she improvised after soaking herself in Aaron Copland records.

Go back out to the hallway, and try the big wooden door to your immediate right. Walk through, and you’re in a tavern down on University Place in Greenwich Village. When Krall came to New York in 1990, this was the jazz bar Bradley’s, where all the great musicians came to hear each other play into the wee hours of the night. The room, which opened in 1969, oozes history: It’s where Thelonious Monk played his last public gig.

Krall had talent and a nascent style when she came to town, but she was still exploring her persona, so she sat in Bradley’s and watched her predecessors for clues of how to act. While her teacher, Jimmy Rowles, or the hard bop trumpeter Freddie Hubbard charged through a set before shuffling to the bar for a drink (and then another and another), Krall absorbed the rhythm and atmosphere of the room. She’d sit at the bar blowing smoke rings, a femme fatale from central casting. (This was back in the day when you were still allowed to light up in New York.)

Bradley’s shows up on Girl in a number called "Changed My Address." Krall returned to the bar last year for the first time since it changed ownership in the late fall of 1996, hoping to show Costello a piece of her past. Now the place is a raucous sports bar called Reservoir. "There’s a pool table where the piano was and a television playing the sports news, but nothing else has changed," she recalls with a shiver. "You go in there, you’re like: Whoa! There’s all the ghosts of these great musicians that used to hang here."

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