Photo by Michael Weintrob

Nonchalantly climbing the steps and walking over to his Rhodes electric piano, Jonah Smith took the stage at little past 10 o’clock. He sat down gracefully and thanked the crowd. There was a notable contrast between the atmosphere Smith created and that of the preceding act, singer-songwriter Dave Barnes. Between tunes ranging from energetic to sweet, Barnes kept the crowd well-humored with entertaining stories and lighthearted jokes.

Peering out from underneath the brim of his trademark cap, Smith kept the conversation to a minimum but immediately raised the intimacy level within the first few chords of “Little Black Angels,” from Smith’s 2006 Relix Records release, Jonah Smith.

Classifying the mood of Tuesday night’s show is almost as difficult as placing Smith in a specific musical genre. He has been described with intriguing contradictions: a Brooklyn-based songsmith with a trace of a southern drawl, blue-eyed soul, and songwriter-driven pop that borders on jazzy blues… or is it the other way around?

At his performance at the Highline, Smith covered a wide range of both musical and emotional territory, and his voice presents another welcome contradiction. While gritty and biting, there is a smooth, milky coating wrapped around it, a combination that has the capability of making the soul ache.

Slower ballads such as “Give it All Away” and “Darkest of Days” were so polished that they sounded almost as if they were coming straight from Smith’s albums. Remaining tightly knit and structured, these songs seemed to enchant the audience as his lyrics told the stories of the beauty, sweetness, and heartache in ordinary moments The band, which has been playing together since Smith came to New York in 2000, loosened up with “Swamps of Georgia,” a funky, infectious tune written about hitchhiking to Atlanta. As Smith sat back and allowed the others room to jam, the crowd grooved along with the beat.

Perhaps one of the most difficult tasks for any artist is finding a balance between playing the “hits” to the crowd and what he truly wants to play. Despite the difficult nature of that balance, Smith was successful. His placement of both his well-known and newer songs seemed natural, never letting the set go too far one way or the other. The crowd, pleased with what it heard, seemed to love his honesty as he bravely and confidently wove in his newer songs “Bad Habit, “Mrs. Cooper” (which can be found on www.myspace.com/jonahsmith) and “Love Gets Lost.”