JENNA OUTCALT
Staff Writer
When Harry Connick, Jr. was 10 years old, he called Carnegie Hall and asked if he could perform there. They politely informed him that he had called the box office, and they couldn’t help him.
The reason he made the call was to fulfill his mother’s dream of knowing her son played there. Connick’s mother, Anita Frances Livingston, died when he was 13. Connick did not step foot in Carnegie Hall until this year.
“I kind of made a promise to myself to wait for a special occasion,” Connick said in an interview with Hoda Kotb on NBC News’ TODAY. “So over the years, Carnegie Hall would call and ask if I would play, and we always declined, because it wasn’t the right time.”
Now, almost two months after his Carnegie Hall debut, Connick will perform at 8 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater.
Connick is an accomplished singer, pianist, composer and actor who has sold out stadiums all over the world. He has won three Grammys and two Emmys and has been nominated for dozens more.
Connick said in the interview with TODAY that the entire year will be a celebration of his mother’s 100th birthday. Now, Connick is releasing a book titled Babe: Elaboratio to pay tribute to his mother and tell the story of the composition he wrote in her honor. Babe was her nickname as the youngest of six children, and “Elaboratio” is the name of the composition he wrote for her.
“It’s sort of an elaboration of what I thought her life was like because I wasn’t with her for very long, but it’s also an accompaniment to this music that I wrote for her,” he said to TODAY.
Connick had his first performance at Carnegie Hall on May 22 in honor of his mother’s birthday. He will release the full book Sept. 29, and an accompanying documentary will come out in 2027.
At Carnegie Hall, he performed a three-movement symphony that he wrote for her, where each segment depicts a stage of her life. The first movement represents her life growing up in New York. The second movement is her time in North Africa, where she met and married Connick’s father, and the third movement represents New Orleans, where Connick was born and raised.
“What I did with this book and the music I wrote for her was basically elaborate on what I thought her life was like, because I only have 13 years of stories from her,” Connick said to Kotb.
Connick’s show tonight will include jazz standards and tributes to his New Orleans upbringing, as well as original music spanning his varied career. He most recently played at Chautauqua in 2021 as part of his “Time to Play” tour.
In a Q-and-A with Erie Reader, Connick said what he decides to play “depends on the night.”
“I have musicians that can roll with whatever I throw at them, so I just play things that people might enjoy that particular evening,” he said.
Connick told TODAY that he appreciated being able to stay close with his family while still working on movies, writing music and touring.
“I just feel like the luckiest guy in the world,” he said.
