Harry Connick, Jr. Shows ‘True Love’ For Cole Porter On Verve Debut
The first single from the set, ‘Just One Of Those Things,’ is now available.
Grammy and Emmy-winning musician and actor Harry Connick, Jr. today announces his first album for the famed Verve Records label. True Love: A Celebration of Cole Porter will be released on 25 October, with the first single ‘Just One Of Those Things,’ now available.
The 30 million album-selling artist’s stellar career spans three decades on record, film, TV and both concert and Broadway stages. His new project puts the focus on his talents as not only a pianist and singer but as an arranger, orchestrator and conductor. The album sees him giving new life to an entire album of vintage Cole Porter compositions from the Great American Songbook.
“This is the first time I’ve taken a deep dive into another artist’s repertoire,” says Connick, “and Cole Porter was my #1 choice for the project. His lyrics are witty and nuanced and he takes risks as a composer that I find appealing.”
The artistic bond runs deep between Porter and Connick, both master craftsmen of song creation in both music and lyrics. The modern-day artist set the bar high when he took on the True Love project, for which he first selected the songs to reinhabit, then wrote and orchestrated the arrangements. Connick then both assembled and conducted the orchestra, which comprises his longtime touring band, additional horns and a full string section.
As announced last month, Connick will bring the album and his love of Porter’s work to Broadway later this year. The two-time Tony Award nominee will direct the solo show Harry Connick Jr. – A Celebration of Cole Porter in December at the Nederlander Theatre. Before it goes to Broadway, the show’s world premiere will be at the Durham Performing Arts Centre on 21 and 22 September 21.
The True Love album is the latest work of a globally-acclaimed artist who’s been performing since he was nine years old, and emerged with a precocious command of jazz and pop styles after being trained by Ellis Marsalis and James Booker in his native New Orleans.
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caponsacchi
August 12, 2019 at 4:02 pm
Connick is a talented musician whose piano work often strikes me as more impressive than his vocalizing. And if comparisons aren’t unflattering enough, the photo-ad directing attention to this latest release by the prolific recording artist is adjacent to the review of a 1962 London Concert featuring the “standard-bearer” himself, Frank Sinatra. At least Connick lowers the bar for expectations by suggesting that, rather than embracing a fresh interpretation of arguably America’s greatest composer of popular song, he’s taking a dive into the work of a “fellow artist” whose work he finds “appealing.” Faint praise, indeed, which tells us as much about the speaker as the fellow artist.