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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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HARRY CONNICK JR. AND HIS BAND
Radio City Music Hall, New York, April 21st
2007 |
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Move
over King Kong – stand aside Empire State
Building, for I have seen the eighth wonder of the
world and it’s a few blocks away on Sixth,
the Radio
City Music Hall. And for all the times I’ve
walked past its neon-drenched exterior I’ve
never been in, and never anticipated just what a
breathtakingly glorious monument to modern music
it is. |
| This
art deco masterpiece was opened in 1932, part of
the Rockefeller Centre development, which I read
(in a book!) “in its architecture stands as
distinctly for New York as the Louvre stands for
Paris”. But it’s the striking deco interior
that would really blow you away. Designed by Donald
Deskey (who was also responsible for, among other
things, the Tide detergent logo and the original
Crest toothpaste tube) it features a cavernous atrium
and an auditorium that’s dominated by a spectacular
proscenium arch. Oh yes – it’s also
full of security guards and ‘no photography’
signs, so no pictures from us I’m afraid.
But the best part is what we refer to back in London
as ‘the bogs’. With very few exceptions
London’s live music experience is accompanied
by malodorous urinals with piss and beer-swimming
floors. Not here – as Harry
Connick Jr. rightly said, “This
is New York. This is the Radio City Music Hall.
This is high class”. We’ve got a Gentleman’s
Lounge – a spotless period decorated 48 stall
(plus cubicles – I didn’t get time to
count) temple to the lost male art of passing water.
The eighth wonder of the world indeed! |
| Young
Harry Connick
Jr. is on the road with his band promoting two
new albums, Chanson du Vieux Carre, and Oh, My Nola,
“an unprecedented musical cornucopia of songs
inspired by and associated with the Crescent City”
says Harry’s website. Harry is a native of
New Orleans and has been in the fore of those musicians
supporting efforts to rebuild the city and its musical
heritage post Hurricane Katrina, so ‘proceeds’
from the CD sales will go to the New
Orleans Habitat Musicians' Village with which
Connick is heavily involved, along with his label-owner
Branford Marsalis, brother of Wynton (who Harry
tells us, is teaching his eleven year old daughter
how to play the trumpet), and son of pianist Ellis,
who along with pianist James Booker mentored the
young Connick in music. |
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| It’s
all bit New Orleans incestuous. In case you didn’t
know Connick is, not to understate matters, a hugely
talented polymath of performing arts – he
composes, he plays, he sings and he also acts. With
such a sickening array of accomplishments it’s
nice to note that he also exudes an easy and open
personality, befitting of his birthplace. |
| He’s
on stage with his big band – Connick on piano,
with drummer, string-bass, three trumpets, three
saxophones and three trombones – playing tunes
mainly from the Nola album. It’s mostly a
collection of standards like ‘Working in a
coalmine’, ‘Bill Bailey’ Jambalaya’,
‘Hello Dolly’. ‘It had to be you’,
‘Down on Bourbon Street’, ‘If
you go the New Orleans’, ‘Basin Street
Blues’ along with songs such as Allen Toussaint’s
‘We can make it’. Many are set in artful
but over-complex arrangements that frankly mystify
many of the audience around us who seem to have
a relatively short attention span – but they
allow Connick to showcase his keyboard skills. Connick
moves from his Steinway to an old upright (for a
Mrs Mills style “Sunnyside of the Street’)
and also a Hammond B3 – his singing is good,
but it’s when he leaves the keyboards that
he really turns on the vocal style. |
| The
whole evening is a bit like a TV special (maybe
to accommodate the short attention span folks) -
there’s a great backdrop of New Orleans style
cast-iron balconies and a couple of lit old-style
lampposts. Two star guests – trumpeter Leroy
Jones and trombonist Lucien
Barbarin, with whom Harry fools around and also
performs what I have subsequently learnt is called
a “three fanny booty shake”. Drummer
Arthur Latin
performs a tour-de force solo with the sticks on
the Steinway lid (ouch), lampposts and almost anything
else he can hit. What else – oh yeah –
Harry’s third trombonist proposes to his intended
on stage, Harry introduces us to his wife and kids
(whom he loves very dearly, I’m glad to say),
and the little girls appear to dance on stage at
the end of the show. Very TV special indeed. |
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| But
for all the schmaltz Harry Connick Jr. is simply
charming. He adopts the persona of the naive southern
boy in the dizzy-dazzling Big Apple (a bit odd as
he’s just been on Broadway for several months
in the Pyjama Game) and uses that as a platform
to mercilessly rib metropolitan mores. This includes
a very funny story about trying to buy a ‘beat-up
piano’ from the City’s Steinway dealers.
He is suitably self-depreciating (particularly about
his shiny black shoes, which must be the shiniest
I have ever seen) and also clearly having fun, as
are the audience who lap it up. |
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For
his encore he tap dances on the Steinway (sans shoes)
and shouts to his daughters “don’t do
this at home girls, this is a rental piano, the
one at home I paid for”. He leaves the stage
to a standing ovation, and we leave for a burger
(me via yet another pilgrimage to the Gentleman’s
Lounge for a quick pass). A very satisfactory Saturday
night show in the Big A – and even if you
never go and see Mr Connick Jr. you should certainly
buy his Nola album, as it’s supporting a very
good cause. - Nick Morgan |
Check
the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
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There's nothing more down there... |
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