Crooner Connick adds new tech to old-school sounds The Hartford Courant The term "big band'' may have a retro sound to it. But there's a modern component to the one led by Harry Connick Jr. The band's music stands are strictly high-tech 2000 with laptop computers replacing the stacks of chart music. On Connick's current big-band tour, Connick can call out a title and with a punch of a keyboard, the band's 16 musicians will each have the right charts up on their screens. "They just call it up, and it's right there,'' Connick says over the phone from Ottawa, Canada. "They don't have to manhandle any music or go searching for it or anything like that.'' When it comes time to turn pages, he says, "They just hit the space bar and it scrolls through.'' Connick uses software called Finale, which "has been used for writing music for a long time,'' he says, "but never for reading, as far as I know.'' Connick frequently uses the writing component of the software. On tour, the pianist, singer and arranger aims to write arrangements for a new song every day. "We don't have to wait for any copyists and things like that,'' he says. And instead of waiting for ink to dry, parts are ready for rehearsal and evening performance every day. It keeps musicians on their toes, Connick says, "but they're used to it. They're musicians, and musicians are supposed to handle musical challenges.'' Actually, it might be making the tour more fun for them, too. "No matter how much you love performing, if you have the same 10 songs every night, it's going to drive you crazy after a while,'' he says. With the new charts, "We have a pretty vast library of songs to choose from,'' Connick says. How big? Well, without any repetition, he says, "We could play for two months. It's just a lot of tunes.'' Connick recorded three successful big-band albums between 1989 and 1991 . After seven years, he says, something in his head was telling him to reconvene the ensemble. "I was just hearing it, you know?'' He did so in 1998, and the resulting "Come by Me'' has been near the top of the Billboard Top Jazz Album chart for 32 weeks now. Besides the new songs, Connick puts a new spin on some old standards. He says he hasn't heard any criticism yet about re-releasing such songs as "There's No Business Like Show Business.'' "I think if anybody cares that much for the song, they'll be thrilled to hear it performed at all,'' Connick says. "If you're talking about die-hard Ethel Merman fans, you could probably count those on one hand'' although he quickly adds, "I would be one of the digits on the hand. "But on a song like that,'' he goes on, "to be quite honest, I don't think a lot of people heard those lyrics. Absolutely brilliant lyrics. If anybody doesn't think so, try to write something like that.'' Connick has tried to write similar songs but has endeavored not to let his influences show. "Whether or not those songwriting styles influence me remains to be heard in the music,'' Connick says. "But I certainly don't think about that at all when I'm writing. Not at this point in my life. Maybe 10 years ago. As a piano player and a singer, people had huge influences on me.'' Frank Sinatra is the comparison most people make with Connick's vocal style. "There's been a ton of singers I used to downright imitate and piano players that I used to imitate, because that's what you do,'' he says. Even so, Connick doesn't regret getting into music so young, at age 19 when Columbia signed him. "Oh no, I think it made me better. Plus I happen to like that, purely from an egotistical perspective, I happen to like everything that accompanies the success.'' Originally on page 8A in the 1-26-2000 issue of the Daily.