Harry Connick Jr. changes his tunes for concert in China
Published 10:59 pm Thursday, March 13, 2008
SHANGHAI, China — Singer-pianist Harry Connick Jr. is the latest Western performer to bump up against China’s cultural restrictions.
Connick said Thursday he was forced to make last-minute changes to his show last weekend in Shanghai because an old song list was mistakenly submitted to Chinese authorities to secure the performance permit for the concert.
Authorities insisted he play the songs on that list, even though his band did not have the music for them.
“Due to circumstances beyond my control, I was not able to give my fans in China the show I intended,” Connick said in a statement.
J.Q. Whitcomb, a musician living in Shanghai, said the concert mostly featured Connick playing piano by himself, with the band sitting on stage doing nothing.
“Other people there said, ‘Wow, that was pretty mellow,’” he said.
Embarrassed last week by Icelandic singer Bjork shouting “Tibet!” at the end of a Shanghai concert, Chinese authorities have promised to be stricter on foreign performers. The Culture Ministry said last week that Bjork’s outburst in support of Tibet’s independence movement “broke Chinese law and hurt Chinese people’s feelings.”
“Foreign artistic troupes and artists should voluntarily observe relevant laws and regulations of China when they come to perform on the Chinese soil,” Vice Minister of Culture Zhou Heping said of the incident in a media conference Thursday.
