Diana Krall brings songs of her youth to the Mann Center

For listeners of a certain age, Diana Krall's new album, Wallflower, may evoke memories of skipping around the AM radio dial while cruising in their AMC Gremlin.

The album is mostly made up of 1970s pop radio hits drenched in string arrangements by 16-time Grammy-winning producer David Foster. Krall, 50, takes a detour from her usual repertoire to revisit the popular songs of her own youth, including the Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreamin'," The Carpenters' "Superstar," Elton John's "Sorry Seems To Be the Hardest Word," Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again (Naturally)," and not one but two Eagles songs.

Krall will revisit much of that material, along with songs from throughout her career, at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts on Friday night, backed in part by an unusually prestigious cover band - the Philadelphia Orchestra. Unlike Wallflower, which largely relegates her piano playing to the background in favor of Foster's saccharine strings, she'll also spend some time onstage with her regular band - guitarist Anthony Wilson, bassist Dennis Crouch, fiddle player Stuart Duncan, drummer Karriem Riggins, and keyboardist Patrick Warren.

Wallflower is the second album in a row to feature the music of Krall's past, following Glad Rag Doll, which featured jazz tunes from the 1920s and '30s, culled from her father's collection of 78s.

"Glad Rag Doll wasn't only my father's music," Krall explained over the phone from her native British Columbia. "It was my music, before I discovered Miles Davis and Oscar Peterson, that I listened to with my father, and that I still listen to now. Wallflower is my music that I listened to on vinyl and on the radio."

It's not uncommon for modern jazz artists to tackle pop songs of their own era. The Beatles have become nearly as ubiquitous in the jazz repertoire as Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, and modern pop innovators such as Radiohead and Björk are rapidly joining their ranks. But Krall insisted that it wasn't her intention to reimagine these songs in a contemporary jazz idiom.

"I didn't set out to make these into new jazz standards," she said. "I wanted to stay true to what the composers wrote, but with a different vibe. It's not based on singing a song, improvising three choruses, going back to the bridge and out. It's about how you're going to tell a story, and that's equally challenging, I must say."

Krall has also been running in more pop-focused circles in recent years, which might have influenced her approach to the project. She's been married for more than a decade to Elvis Costello; led the band for Paul McCartney's latest album, Kisses on the Bottom; and toured with Neil Young on a series of benefit concerts to raise money to battle tar sands extraction on Canadian First Nations tribal land.

"That was a mind-blowing, fantastic thing to be able to do, to watch Neil Young solo from the side of the stage," Krall said. "It was a long walk to that piano every night, but he gave me incredible freedom. I'm Benjamin Button - I keep moving forward backward."

Krall refers to working with McCartney, "the greatest experience of my life, along with working with Tony Bennett and Ray Brown. How many people can say that? Paul, besides being someone I respect as an artist, is such a great human being." One result is the inclusion of an unrecorded McCartney composition, "If I Take You Home Tonight," on Wallflower.

"We recorded the day after Hurricane Sandy happened," the singer recalled. "Paul played this tune, and I really loved it. Karriem Riggins suggested that I should do that tune, so I asked Paul and he said, 'Sure.' He got a copy of the song and he liked it, which was a big relief. I was holding my breath."

In addition to the nostalgia factor, Krall is attracted to the lyrics, which reflect her current situation better than some of the songs she performed when younger. As the happily married mother of 8-year-old twin sons, she says that she can't quite relate in the same way to a song like Dave Frishberg's "Peel Me a Grape," which she recorded in a famously seductive rendition on her 1997 album Love Scenes.

"I still play it because it's fun and the audience wants to hear it, but I don't feel those words as strongly as I used to," she said. "It represents a time when I was 28 years old. I'm not trying to say I'm looking for depth in every single thing. You watch different movies and read different books for different reasons. I just try to find things that I can relate to in a story. Last night, I turned on my old iPhone and found a whole Chuck Berry compilation, so I just sat at the piano and played along with Chuck Berry for half an hour. It's a lovely place to be."

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Diana Krall

8 p.m. Friday at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts, 5201 Parkside Ave.

Tickets: $25-$85.

Information: 800-745-3000 or www.manncenter.org

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