Las Vegas Sun

March 18, 2024

Harry Connick Jr. gears up for a big tour with Wynn shows

Harry Connick Jr.

Erik Kabik

Harry Connick Jr. is back on the Strip this week.

Musician and actor Harry Connick Jr. last played the Las Vegas Strip in the fall of 2017, bringing an eclectic and dynamic concert to Encore Theater. He’s back this week with a different approach, a show that will incorporate plenty of his own jazz-pop hits as well as favorite tunes by the legendary Cole Porter. It’s a stripped-down version of the Broadway series he unleashed in December to support his latest recording, “True Love: A Celebration of Cole Porter.”

“It’s a pretty short tour but I really wanted to do a tour like this, an intimate show with only seven or eight musicians playing a lot of Cole Porter but a lot of songs from different albums I’ve done over the years, too,” he says. “It’s a very different show from what I did on Broadway and that show is going to be touring the world in the fall. This is a much more nimble show. It doesn’t have those giant sets and all that choreography. It’s a different kind of thing, very spur of the moment.”

Connick’s mini-tour starts February 26 at Wynn Las Vegas and eventually moves on to Arizona, New Mexico and Texas in March. He’s still assembling the full-scale version for the fall, which could include massive video screen programming and a 25-piece orchestra if it aligns with the Broadway performances. He’s hoping that bigger show will land in Las Vegas as well.

“That’s a huge project and we need more time to wrap that up and plan for that,” he says. “It’s a big one.”

Connick is certainly no stranger to the familiar and beloved catalog of Cole Porter, but his appreciation for these songs has developed through the years.

“When I was really young, there were a lot of songs he wrote that I knew and [played] but I didn’t know they were Cole Porter songs,” says Connick, famously a New Orleans prodigy who started recording with a jazz band at age 10. “They were just part of the jazz repertoire. It wasn’t until later that I started to realize he was the guy and to understand him in a different way. He’s been in my life a long time.”

“Love For Sale” might be the Porter song Connick has performed for the longest time.

He has a lot of touring on the slate for 2020 but Connick also found time to shoot a movie that should be released soon, a drama called “Fear of Rain” starring Katherine Heigl.

“It’s pretty intense. I play the father of a girl with schizophrenia,” he says. “It’s been a minute since I’ve done a [dramatic] role [like this one]. I really like to do a variety of things and when this script came in, I just thought it was pretty cool.”

“Harry Connick Jr. Presents True Love” will be performed at 8 p.m. February 26, 28 and 29 at Encore Theater (3131 Las Vegas Blvd. South, 702-770-9966) and more information can be found at wynnlasvegas.com.