By Alex Strachan March 1, 2011 Postmedia News / Calgary Herald LOS ANGELES — Harry Connick, Jr. has left his heart in New Orleans, but that doesn't mean his music won't travel. The New Orleans native and founder of the Krewe of Orpheus, a Mardi Gras parade named for Orpheus from Greek mythology, is 43 — nearly a decade older than Michael Buble — but he still snaps his fingers to a youthful vibe. Connick's music, like Buble's, is a throwback to the Swing Era of the early 1930s, with its big-band vibe and smooth, chilled vocals — music that leaves one stirred, not shaken. And when the three-time Grammy winner and romantic leading man takes the stage Wednesday for the eponymous Great Performances concert, Harry Connick, Jr. in Concert on Broadway, aficionados of the Big Band era will swoon to a familiar song set that includes Jerome Kerns and Dorothy Fields' The Way You Look Tonight, and Connick's own Come By Me, We Are in Love and his Tony-nominated Light the Way, from the 2001 Broadway musical, Thou Shalt Not. Harry Connick, Jr. in Concert marks the jazz troubadour's return to the place where, 20 years earlier, he performed his first solo Broadway concert. Connick performed the concert at New York's Neil Simon Theater, sitting at a Steinway grand and upright honky-tonk piano, backed by a 12-piece string section. A print review from the normally cranky New York media noted of Connick's performance that night that, "Connick, in concert, packs such dynamite that those 'Jersey Boys' across the street seem positively sedate." Everything's relative: Big band isn't grind punk. Even so, in person, Connick isn't one to wallow in nostalgia from another era. That's why he agreed to mentor the final group of performers in last season's American Idol, when that season was down to the final five. He struck a special chord with folk-rock singer and Idol finalist Crystal Bowersox, putting in long hours behind the scenes and, according to Bowersox, devoting more time to mentoring the young singers than any of Idol's other celebrity tutors. Connick was thought to be interested in being a full-time judge on Idol this season — the slots eventually filled by recording artist Jennifer Lopez and Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler — but when reminded of those turmoil-ridden days, Connick laughed and said it's all he can do these days to keep up with New Orleans' post-Katrina music scene. His song set in Harry Connick, Jr. in Concert includes the Big Easy standards, Take Her to the Mardi Gras, St. James Infirmary Blues, Bourbon Street Parade, and Mardi Gras in New Orleans. "They asked me if I was interested in doing Idol, and I was interested," Connick said. "I had a blast on the show. I like working with kids; I like doing that stuff, you know. It was fun talking with these young people about singing. "We had some preliminary conversations, but it just kind of fizzled out, which is fine. Had it materialized, it would have been fun to do. But fortunately, I have a lot of other things going, so that was fine." Connick said he's had experience as a contestant in so-called "cutting contests," a contest between two jazz musicians to see who's the better player. Asked whom he would want to go up against, and whom he would be scared to go up against, Connick laughed and said, "Do you want the real answer? Or do you want the diplomatic answer?" The hell with diplomacy. "I really wouldn't be scared to go up against anybody, only because I'm very confident in who I am," Connick said. "I'm not saying I'm better than anyone else; I'm just saying I know who Harry is. I'm the only guy with that fingerprint. So no matter what you do, you're not me." He continues:"Do you know how many cutting contests I've been in? I've been in a lot. I just played the Apollo with Herbie Hancock. Herbie and I played back and forth. I played with Ellis Marsalis, dual piano. I've been in cutting contests where people challenged me to play New Orleans piano, which is, I believe, foolish on their part. "I can't do much, but I can do that. I love cutting contests. They don't happen nearly enough. They're fun. You have two pianos, and let's go. It's not about getting in the house. It's not about (who gets)the most enthusiastic applause from the audience. The piano players know. They know who just got spanked. "There were some classic cutting contests, in the past. I mean, when Art Tatum would finish a cutting contest, he would just close the piano lid. That's it. That's just the way it was. You did not play after him. Would I be scared to play up against Art Tatum? I would have to think twice about doing that, but you know what'd I'd have done? I'd take him right to New Orleans, because he don't know that. But that's the only place I could have hid from him. Because if you went anywhere else, he was going to be waiting." Connick's own musical influences are nothing if not eclectic. Mercurial —as in, Freddie Mercury. Not many would have expected that. "What I dug about him so much is he was completely uninhibited as a performer," Connick explained. "He just didn't care. He would just go out and wear what he wanted — nothing mattered. He wasn't afraid. As a young performer, that's what you aspire to:to be able to not care. The more you restrict yourself within the confines of an established art form like jazz, when you become successful at it, it becomes more and more difficult to be uninhibited, because you like the success, you like what's happening to you. "Freddie Mercury was one of those guys who didn't care. That's extremely rare, I think, When you couple that with his musical abilities, well, I wouldn't say he was the greatest piano player in the world, but he was certainly intensely musical. And his vocals; there's a guy I wouldn't want to have a cutting contest with as a singer. He had just silly ability. When you listen to his vibrato, it's erratic. That's just talent, straight-up talent and creativity. That's ridiculous. Imagine what he would have been able to do if he had been trained. It wouldn't have affected his spontaneity or creativity. I think that's a big myth, this idea that when you become educated, it takes away from the soulful part. That's just once-in-a-century talent."