ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 24, 1992                   TAG: 9203240219
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 6   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: JON PARELES NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Medium


HARRY CONNICK JR. EVOKES A YOUTHFUL SINATRA

If he wanted to, Harry Connick Jr. could ride his Frank Sinatra imitation toward a lucrative career of singing old pop standards for nostalgic fans. He refuses to do so, a choice that bolstered his concert here, the opening of a sold-out, 15-show engagement through April 7 here at the Paramount.

The Sinatra imitation is only passable; it helps that Connick is skinny and looks good in a tuxedo. Like the young Sinatra, Connick is a baritone, and he has picked up the Sinatra style of widening the vibrato as a sustained note goes on.

(He also has some of Sinatra's arrogance, boasting between songs that after he told off some audience members in Atlantic City, they lost $100,000 gambling.)

But he can't match the young Sinatra's effortlessness, his precise pitch, or, most important, the sense of storytelling in a song. Regardless of what he's singing, Connick usually sounds emotionally nonchalant and musically studious. Yet that evening the crowd burst into applause whenever Connick started a song like "All of Me" or "It Had to Be You."

In a show that lasted more than two hours, Connick flaunted other skills. He played piano improvisations that juxtaposed modern-jazz harmony and florid New Orleans barrelhouse style.

He sang his own songs from the album "Blue Light, Red Light" (Columbia), often with lyrics by Ramsey McLean, that harked back to prerock pop. He briefly danced and played drums. He paid tribute to New Orleans jazz and sang a mildly risque version of "Sheik of Araby."

And he directed a 17-piece big band in his own arrangements. He even tried to sing gospel in a finale that brought together his band and the opening act, Raymond Myles, a gospel-pop tenor with a 20-member choir. Connick's churchy benevolence cracked, however, when he called someone in the stage crew "you stupid fool" for nearly raising a curtain too soon.

Connick does best in his most thankless job, as band leader and arranger. He drew split-second accuracy from his musicians in arrangements that were both demanding and ingenious.

He has assembled strong soloists, including Russell Malone on guitar and banjo, Leroy Jones on trumpet, Louis Ford on clarinet, Lucien Barbarin on trombone and Shannon Powell on drums - not coincidentally, the makings of a traditional New Orleans jazz combo - and Jerry Weldon on saxophone.

Connick leads a big band in the era of music video and sound bites, and he knows it. Band members, equipped with wireless microphones, roamed across the stage and into the audience; computerized spotlights bathed the bandstand in hot pastels.

Often, Connick seems to have calculated his arrangements for a short attention span. In almost every song, fast or slow, a high-note trumpet climax brayed that the band is, indeed, big and brassy. Yet between the blares, Connick came up with finely balanced reed-section filigrees, subtle brass support and clever tempo shifts.

The opening overture, jump-cutting between be-bop dissonances and swing-era harmony, suggested that Connick is torn between sure-fire crowd-pleasing and modernist adventures, and the concert reinforced that impression. Connick would allow himself some brooding piano improvisations, to the audience's indifference, then turn "Sweet Georgia Brown" into a Liberace-like showpiece, drawing shouts of pleasure.

The crooners and composers of the big-band era were also entertainers, of course. But it's not the 1930s anymore, even with a recession economy. It may be beyond Connick to heal the rift between modern jazz and more popular entertainment that arose after World War II, especially with a strategy that depends so heavily on looking back. Still, it's encouraging that he isn't twice as corny.



 by CNB