Harry Connick Jr. Delivers Clinic On Depth, Breadth & Quality To Seattle’s Benaroya Hall (SHOW REVIEW)

Photo by Nick Klein

Unsurprisingly for an artist of the stature of Harry Connick, Jr., this writer has known of him for seemingly forever – but always as background music of sorts, filed away somewhat dismissively as a Frank Sinatra-Esque heartthrob crooner. And while none of that is necessarily untrue, however, experiencing Harry and his band live on December 20th at the unrivaled Benaroya Hall in Seattle provided a stellar opportunity to realize the depth, breadth, and fundamental, quality of Connick’s performance, music, band, and stage presence. 

To begin, Benaroya is a spectacular venue, engineered for incredible acoustics as the home of the Seattle Symphony. And the 2500-seat Taper Auditorium, which appeared to have been sold out for this second of two evenings of Connick’s Holiday Celebration, was beautifully lit for the occasion. Six string players from the Symphony joined Connick’s eight band members, and together, they brought tremendous energy and joie de vivre to Benaroya. 

Photo by Nick Klein

Connick ran through a variety of songs from his ouvre, weighted heavily but not exclusively with Christmas melodies. As fans doubtless know, Connick is from New Orleans – a fact belied not only by his accent but by the musical energy of so many of his songs. Indeed, this may have been the most interesting aspect of the show: here were nine musicians playing creole-influenced, New Orleans-style big band jazz music, an inherently, brazenly indulgent art form – in the home of one of the most formal, precise forms of music, and accompanied by six musicians for whom classical, orchestral music is their art.

To be clearer: Connick’s band was a blur of movement and energetic performance. The brass artists – clearly all at the top of their games – regularly broke into exuberant solos, with sax, trumpet and trombone blasting boldly exploratory tunes over Neal Caine’s upright bass and Arthur Latin II’s endlessly steady drumming. Of note, Latin was particularly fun to watch, as his face was set in a similarly endless, wonderful smile that conveyed the deep joy he clearly felt playing his heart out. 

The spice and unstructured nature of the jazz musicians were complemented on stage by the beautiful, and more formal, strings of the symphony musicians, creating an intriguing interplay that somehow never failed to work. 

At the heart of it, all was Connick himself. The man is an incredible performer, with a self-effacing, humble yet confident style that endears him to the audience. While some of his lines felt like he probably used them on every audience (“I love performing in Seattle….”, or comments on the audience’s performance on a “Silent Night” singalong), they were stated with such lack of guile as to be fully believable – and as such, all the more charming. He moved between walking the breadth of the stage to sitting at his beautiful grand piano – and even standing at the piano playing his harpejji, a fascinating musical instrument that this reviewer hadn’t previously seen. Similarly, when others soloed, he shouted out their names, hailing all as the best musicians we’d ever see. 

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The setlist was engaging and fun, including not only classics such as “The Way You Look Tonight” but also Connick’s takes on many familiar Christmas songs such as “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” and “Sleigh Ride.” He also played original the title song from his new holiday album Make It Merry, as well as a Cajun holiday song, “Papa Noel,” the words to which he freely admitted neither he nor his Cajun stepmother understood. Meaning aside, the song was a rollicking tune that called to mind the roving zydeco bands one often finds accompanying weddings and other celebrations in New Orleans.  

The audience – a more diverse mix of ages than this writer had expected – was highly engaged and clearly deep fans, readily singing along and providing a standing ovation for the soloists and again at the end. Connick fed the energy, engaging in lighthearted banter and at one point inviting a 10-year-old in the front row to come up and play his piano. When she perhaps unsurprisingly declined his offer, he sat turned sideways at his piano and taught her (and the entire audience) the basics of New Orleans jazz piano playing, wherein the left-hand does all the dancing and the right-hand drops in with ornamentation. The audience ate up the extemporaneous, casual display of mastery evident in the lesson. 

The show closed with “Jingle Bells,” with Harry dancing goofily and with abandon, then jumping back to the piano as his crew soloed; they were all clearly having fun, and the audience was right there with them.  

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