Cool Connick

Some people leave their roots. Harry Connick, Jr celebrates them.
“This is the thing I love doing most,” he told the audience, some 3,000 strong, when he began picking out a tune on a period upright piano. From a few simple notes, he let it build to a rollicking patter, then was joined by two horn players, trumpet and trombone. The three of them, with muted backup from the regular band, played out a 20-minute vignette of an easy life on the streets of New Orleans.
And in Connick’s telling, that life included dance. It was a floppy dance, as though folks burdened by the chores of living were thankful nevertheless to be alive – so thankful that their joy simply overwhelms the monotony, and the stepping and shaking just can’t be stopped.
Connick’s band had started the 100-minute set with an empty seat at the piano. Three trumpets, three trombones, three saxophones, one bass player, and a drummer. They each took a small turn in the spotlight, as a way of self-introduction. When Connick joined them, he added the piano to the big sound, several times introducing a dissonant rhythm that took the band deeper into the complex jazz genre it has mastered.
Surprisingly, Connick seemed most energized by the organ. Of the three keyboards he played, this was the briefest, but the audience glimpsed a rocker inside that suggested he might have a whole new musical field to explore, himself adding a “plus” to the “Jazz” that makes this festival, this new Sonoma tradition, so special.
Connick spoke several times of the devastation in New Orleans from Katrina’s aftermath. The band performed the plaintive piece he’d written about it, ending with a haunting bass solo. And he dedicated his encore piece, a piano solo, to the generosity of Americans who fill the continuing needs of that city’s displaced population. That encore especially left the audience awed with Connick the man and Connick the artist.