For the past 20 years or so, Tony DeSare, now a widely recorded pianist and vocalist who travels extensively to perform, has expressed his love and admiration of Ol’ Blue Eyes with his show “Sinatra and Beyond,” which he will present Thursday at Walk Festival Hall in Teton Village as the latest “Gateway” concert of the Grand Teton Music Festival’s 63rd season.
“It’s not me dressing up in a fedora,” he said of the showcase. “I’m not impersonating him. … But I apply his phrasing style and his taste to what I’m doing.”
“I’ve seen shifts in my audience doing this Frank Sinatra show for a while,” said DeSare, who got to see the man perform in 1994. “Twenty years ago, it was mostly the older crowd who knew Frank and grew up with him, listening to him when he was alive.” These days he’s just as likely to see people in their 20s and 30s.
“Now that he’s been gone for a while,” he said, “the image we have of him is sort of frozen in time, in ’50s and ’60s … we think of him as an icon.”
But the music he created isn’t frozen. DeSare tries to emulate Sinatra’s phrasing and approach to a song, but he also puts a bit of himself in his performances. And, “to keep things interesting, I throw in my own material as well as songs he could have done or would have if he had kept recording.”
In his show, DeSare sings and plays piano with his longtime quartet with drummer Mike Klopp, bassist Dylan Shamat and guitarist Edward Decker.
“We’ve been all around the world together,” he said.