[Dixielandjazz] Harry Connick Jr. interviewed

[Robert Ringwald]

Still Jazzed Up
Harry Connick Jr. says his diverse career keeps him interested in everything
by Jim Abbott
Orlando Sentinel, April 10, 2011
Being a jazz guy, Harry Connick Jr. operates by the notion that a performance changes
from night to night.
Yet that mind-set faces a challenge at times, as it did when Connick and his band
were recorded for the CD and DVD "In Concert on Broadway" during a 15-day run at
the Neil Simon Theatre in New York. Even a veteran such as Connick, who stops tonight
at Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre, admits there's a mind game to keeping things
spontaneous.
"When it's not being recorded, I don't want to say anything goes, but there's no
consequences," Connick, 43, says in a phone interview from a tour stop in Oklahoma.
"If you're playing a jazz solo and it's being recorded, it's almost impossible not
to keep in mind that it's being documented. I think the playing becomes more careful,
which it shouldn't."
In the same way, Connick says, songs evolve as a jazz ensemble works its way through
a tour.
"I will say that things organically start to change. If there's one tune that you
play often and you listen to it at the beginning of the tour and then at the end,
it's just different. It's like the telephone game," he says, referring to the whispering
game in which a sentence changes as it travels across a room.
When it comes to the music, does Connick consider himself his worst critic? The answer
involves another mind game.
"I'm not critical to the point of having it affect the next show, but if I'm in the
middle of a show and play a really weak solo or sing something out of tune, I'm disappointed.
But I have a really short memory; you have to as a performer. You stick to the game
plan and make it better."
Connick's game plan, of course, finds him splitting his music career with a busy
schedule acting in films and theater. He recently was tapped to star in a Broadway
revival of "On a Clear Day, You Can See Forever," slated to open this fall. Connick
says there are only a few common threads between the theater and concert halls.
"It's a similar concept, but there's not a lot of things that overlap. If you're
talking about the telephone game, that really applies in theater, where you're literally
doing the same thing every night. If you don't exercise some discipline, you end
up with caricatures of what you started out with."
On the film side, Connick is a cast member, with Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd,
in the family-oriented "Dolphin Tale," slated for fall release.
"I don't think I could do five movies in a row or stay on Broadway for five years,"
he says. "I just finished two movies ["Dolphin Tale" and "When Angels Sing"], and
now I'm playing a gig, so that keeps it all fresh for me."
Does Connick, once a prodigy in the fertile New Orleans scene, wonder what it would
be like to start now, in the "American Idol" era?
"The good thing about 'Idol' is that people get their careers jump-started -- and
the bad part is that they get their careers started," says Connick, once an "Idol"
mentor. "When I started out, I was surrounded by a lot of people who were not impressed.
When you have millions of people telling you how great you are, you have a tendency
to believe it."


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
530/ 642-9551 Office
916/ 806-9551 Cell
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