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Harry Connick Jr.: Grammy-winning crooner, matinee idol, TV star, Broadway musical author. And now, introverted jazz musician. Well, not quite. In the second of his two sets at Scullers a week ago Tuesday, Connick blabbed up a storm between numbers — heckling members of the audience like a nightclub comedian, calming the occasional female cry of "I love you, Harry!" with a "Thank you." But the 90-minute set was given over almost entirely to the introspective chamber jazz of his new Other Hours (Marsalis Music/Rounder). Granted, drummer Arthur Latin II alluded to a rootsy New Orleans shuffle throughout the night, but Connick and tenor-saxophonist Ned Goold favored solos full of understated, odd, fragmentary lines. Goold in particular is fascinating in his use of dynamics and his variety of timbres, his use of rests, his shifts into double-time passages, his slippery phrases that are now light and pure, now rich in glottal rumbles. They conjured less bright-toned extroverts Wynton Kelly and Hank Mobley than dry-toned brainiacs Lennie Tristano and Warne Marsh. And Connick was almost reticent. On the set’s first number, he tentatively and very quietly picked out short lines. It wasn’t until well into the third tune that he broke into longer and longer right-hand lines, increasing the velocity of notes and hanging in the middle and lower register, again suggesting Tristano’s endless lines of coming-at-you even eighth notes. On "Tugboat," at least, he began to show some real heat. Latin laid down some slow, shuffling rolls. Connick played quietly, then built to some dramatic staccato chords before bringing it back down to a hush and a silky legato rush of single notes capped by some beautiful impressionistic chording. There was a long a cappella passage from Connick that settled on a five-note rumba figure, whereupon the band joined him. Connick didn’t sing a note, the full house listened in rapt silence, and in the end he rewarded everyone with a boogied-up solo piano encore of the theme from The Godfather.
BY JON GARELICK
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