By Valerie Milano March 1, 2011 PBS Press Tour Pasadena, CA (Hollywood Today) Mardi Gras 2011 is just around the corner, Fat Tuesday is March 8 so start thinking colorful beads, King Cakes, gumbo and Harry Connick, Jr. Performing at the summer TCA press tour, Connick began the evening playing “The Way You Looked Tonight”, spoke for a few minutes and continued tinkling the ivories with a little help from the brass. The room was packed with critics and their guests who served up a standing ovation. Connick told Hollywood Today how he got started playing music, “We’d see these small groups in usually very small venues, a lot smaller than this. And my parents would bring me and my sister down to the French Quarter from the time we were little-little, like, 3, 4, 5 years old. And they knew I wanted to play piano because I would play around the house and practice “When the Saints Go Marching In” or songs like that. And when I was about 6, I started sitting in. They’d see me sitting here, and they’d say, “Harry, you want to come up and play?” because that’s sort of a New Orleans tradition, to have young musicians sit in. I did that till I was about 14, when I started actually working down there and getting hired as the piano player at a lot of those traditional gigs.” It seems he always knew he has to perform, “I’m one of those personalities who had to be, you know, at the center of attention all the time.” Harry’s talents include composing, singing, pianist, television and films. He’s won 3 Grammys and an Emmy and Wednesday, March 2 PBS Great Performances presents “Harry Connick, Jr. in Concert on Broadway”. The jazzy-swing-blues are a wonderful precursor to Mardi Gras next week. The man is a true performer and it’s difficult to categorize him into a specific category except to call him a Nawleans performer. “Some people think of me as, you know, a guy who sings. Like, one of my daughter’s friends said that I sing vintage pop. And then, like, some people think of me as a jazz musician and they want to ignore the singing part of it. Some people, very few people kind of don’t care about the singing at all and kind of acknowledge the orchestrations and things like that, which is as much a part of what I do as the singing. So, man, I can’t even think about satisfying anybody. That happens when I’m onstage, and then all of that other stuff just has to. I just go out and try to just like we’re talking now. You try to build a relationship. You know, it’s like being on a date or something. You know, you gotta ask a lot of questions, and you gotta be considerate and polite. And as the evening goes on, you kind of reveal a little bit more of yourself. That’s why, when a lot of people see me play, they say, “You’re a real stiff at the beginning of your shows.” And I probably am, because, you know, you don’t want to come into that date, you know, with your shirt unbuttoned all the way down.” “You know what I mean? You gotta take it a little bit slow. That’s how we do things in New Orleans. You got to warm up to it, you know.”