From The Age TheAge.com.au By Craig Mathieson March 15, 2010 Harry Connick, Jr. might be a stickler for Southern manners but he's no pushover. PART of Harry Connick, Jr.'s charm is that he makes everything he does look remarkably easy. His self-titled debut album was released in 1987, when he was all of 20 years old and newly arrived in New York from his hometown of New Orleans. Since then there's been a succession of records, selling more than 25 million copies worldwide, and a string of film roles. Except when performing under stage lights, he doesn't appear to have broken a sweat in more than two decades. ''I basically am on the same path that I was on when I was 18,'' he agrees. ''I'm still doing exactly what I want to do and it's been fun.'' For his forthcoming Australian tour, Connick, 42, will be accompanied by about 10 musicians, some of whom have been members of his big band since he put it together in June 1990. Several of the instrumentalists are close friends, resulting in a bond built during 20 years of intermittent touring that has personal and professional advantages. ''I'm not really a big fan of over-rehearsing. When we went on tour this time we hadn't played together in over a year and we got together the day before the first show and went over some tunes,'' Connick notes. ''When you're dealing with musicians of this calibre, the only thing you can't assume is that the band will gel immediately but all the notes are going to get played and the notes will be strong.'' Connick has impeccable manners, befitting the southern-raised son of a New Orleans district attorney father and a Louisiana state judge mother, but he's also not short of self-belief. Connick knows what he wants and the distinguishing qualities that will propel him towards his goal. He doesn't do faux humility. ''I've always thought of myself as one of a kind. There are infinitely more talented people than me out there but I never had a problem with realising my own identity,'' he says. ''When you do that you can feel that you're at a good place. I see a lot of young kids in their teens and early 20s that sound great and you can tell the ones who have that same self-awareness from the ones that don't.'' That makes the idea of Your Songs, Connick's latest album, all the more intriguing. Released late last year, it's an excursion into a broadly defined version of the American Songbook canon: (They Long to Be) Close to You, Mona Lisa, Some Enchanted Evening, First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. The musician put his stamp on the record by arranging the selections, recasting Elton John's Your Song, for example, with a jazzy, upbeat feel. It's that degree of control at the version's conception, Connick believes, that separates him from so many of his contemporaries. Connick knows that with such a mainstream selection he could have coasted through Your Songs but even joking about him phoning in familiar takes to make his life easier has him quick to react. ''That's my job, that's what I love about my work,'' he says. ''I'm a musician and that's what I'm passionate about: making music. It's not about taking a shortcut, it's about being a song interpreter and that means interpreting every aspect of the song.'' While his Australian shows aren't merely a showcase for Your Songs - ''We play different tracks every night,'' he says - the tour does follow his promotional trip for that record here in October, when Connick's dismissal of a blackface tribute to the Jackson Five on the resurrected Hey Hey, It's Saturday made headlines around the world and bumped up the viewing figures for YouTube. The Jackson Jive imbroglio was the sole topic ruled off-limits for Connick's Australian interviews, although watching it now it's notable how he remained calm and articulate. The social issue about which he is most vocal now is the reconstruction of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. Connick and his longtime friend, saxophonist Branford Marsalis, developed the Musicians' Village project with several non-profit groups, focusing on rebuilding homes for local musicians in the city's devastated ninth ward. Almost 100 dwellings have been completed, with a music centre, named for Connick's teacher and Branford Marsalis's father, Ellis, now also under way. ''It's really hard to articulate how much damage was done,'' Connick says. ''In many cases it was as simple as people having no place to live but as the houses are being rebuilt they're starting to come back. There's no shortage of music down there. When you consider the magnitude of what happened, it's on schedule compared to other disasters in history - it can take decades to bring things back as they were and we've only had five years.'' The passing of time is something of which Harry Connick jnr is well aware. He's outlasted the Frank Sinatra comparisons that dogged his early records but at the same time the boyishness has worn away. He's in the middle of a career that could go in multiple directions, with future releases planned to include a recording of Frederic Chopin's etudes for piano. ''I don't think that because I'm a certain age I have to play differently,'' Connick reasons, politely but firmly. ''I'm going to sound different and I'm going to play different but the one thing that is a constant is that I still do whatever I want to do musically.'' Harry Connick, Jr. plays the Opera House Concert Hall on Monday, March 22 (sold out) and Tuesday, March 23.