Norah Jones performs at Oxbow RiverStage in Napa, Calif. on June 25, 2022.

NAPA — The kind of music Norah Jones makes – an intimate jazz-pop with country inflections – doesn’t always translate well to a larger stage, especially an outdoor one. But her show at the Oxbow RiverStage in downtown Napa Saturday night had (almost) all the cozy charm of a small club, and with help of an excellent sound system, Jones put across 20 songs with the kind of sly subtlety not often successfully achieved in a large park setting.

The Oxbow RiverStage is, in fact, a Napa city park property, immediately south of the Napa Valley Wine Train headquarters building. A playful Jones, late in her set, noted the train’s last return arrival of the night, on an overpass at the park’s edge: “Hey, party people!

Jones’ sultry, dusky singing has become more full-throated since she came to prominence with her 2002 hit single “Don’t Know Why,” and it put across an even more spare version of that hit, and other songs that showed a variety of moods and emotions, from the slinky melancholy desperation of “Say No More” (“I’ll pretend you’re everything I need”), the stark piano-and-pedal-steel arrangement of “Travelin’ On,” the hard-edged “Little Broken Hearts” (on which Jones played guitar) and her version of the blues, “Turn Me On.”

Norah Jones performs at Oxbow RiverStage in Napa, Calif. on June 25, 2022.

To say Jones’ distinctive voice carried the night was only part of the story. Her three-member band (guitarist and pedal steel player Dan Iead, bassist-vocalist Chris Morrissey and drummer Brian Blade) provided the perfect support for Jones’ creative piano playing and singing. Aside from Jones, Iead’s pedal steel, at times achingly beautiful, was the dominant instrumental voice on this night, giving songs like “Travelin’ On” and “Little Broken Hearts” an added high lonesome boost.

Blade’s percussion work also changed effortlessly with the needs of each song, and Morrissey’s complex bass lines and harmony vocals on several songs gave added texture.

Jones, whose breakout 2002 album, “Come Away With Me,” was re-released in expanded form this year (it followed 2020’s Pick Me Up Off the Floor), got vocal help on a cover of Tom Petty’s “Angel Dream” from Regina Spektor, who had performed a strong 10-song set as Jones’ opening act on this night. Like Jones, a strong pianist, Spektor is a more conventional singer, but her songs come from a different, slightly quirkier but no less intense place than Jones’ work.

Regina Spektor performs at Oxbow RiverStage in Napa, Calif. on June 25, 2022.

Spektor was playing her first show in three years.

Alone with the piano, she led off with the jaunty “Folding Chairs” and continued through “Apres Moi” (“Be afraid of the lame, they’ll inherit your legs/ Be afraid of the old, they’ll inherit your souls”) and the lead track from her new album, Home, before and after, “Becoming All Alone.” In that song, God suggests He and the singer talk over a beer (“And we didn’t even have to pay ‘cause God is God and He’s revered”). Much of Spektor’s clever wordplay – “And I just want to ride, but this whole world, it makes me carsick,” she told God – may seem cheery on the surface, but is darker just below.

Regardless of the tenor of each song, both Jones and Spektor offered friendly banter with the near-capacity crowd of about 4,000 people, and generally seemed to be enjoying themselves. Spektor, who was born in Russia, said she had Ukrainian grandparents.

“I’m sick and tired of the siblings killing each other,” she said of the Russian war in Ukraine.

Early in her set, Jones acknowledged a sign held up by a fan, spelled “Nora Jones.” She said she liked the sign, but noted her name was spelled wrong, and soon told the crowd she felt bad for “shaming” the woman. A few songs later, Jones gave a shout-out to the woman with the sign, who added the necessary “h” to it.

“You fixed it!” Jones said, to loud cheers. The sign may have been faulty, but nothing about the show was.

Follow journalist Sam Richards at Twitter.com/samrichardsWC. Follow photographer Nathan McKinley at Instagram.com/memories.by.mckinley.