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OTTAWA -- Harry Connick Jr. just might have shocked the audience at last night's "My New Orleans" concert at the NAC when he set aside his Hollywood celebrity and stuck to playing some good old-fashioned New Orleans jazz.
Not even one endorsement for his latest film, Bug.
Connick stuck to the music he grew up on as a precocious piano-playing teen, studying jazz with Ellis and Branford Marsalis and sneaking into Bourbon St. nightclubs. It's the inspiration for his latest CD, Oh My NOLA, (New Orleans, La.) his recent album of old-school standards, and this back-to-his-roots tour that began shortly after the Hurricane Katrina devastated his hometown in 2005.
So it wasn't surprising that Connick's gig was heavy on Cajun flavours. What did seem to catch the audience off-guard was seeing just how serious a musician Connick really is.
Decorated with smokey, blue-lit images of a French Quarter bar, with streetlights and low-hanging ceiling fans, the show had the look and feel of a late-night jam, opening with drummer Arthur Latin's extended drum solo before the rest of Connick's 11-piece band joined in with a Mancini-style arrangement of tunes from NOLA.
For most of the 100-minute show, Connick stayed behind the keyboard, slicing and dicing his way through extended jams, including Working in the Coal Mine, Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey, St. James Infirmary, Hello Dolly, Jambalaya and causing some romantic stirring on the funky love standard Careless Love.
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Connick was playing so hard that he stopped the show to ask the audience if anyone had a nail clipper -- to cut up the ushers and fans who ran to his aid, apparently, before moving from the grand to a vintage, out-of-tune upright, the kind you might see in a saloon.
By the time Connick brought out trombonist Lucien Barbarin for a creaky duet on Yes Sir, That's My Baby, he was really starting to have some fun, even skat-dancing in the corner while Charles Goold wailed on alto sax.
This is what my jazz-loving dad would have called "a real concert," meaning that what made the show really entertaining was hearing extraordinary musicians blow the top off a great tune.