Oak Room, Algonquin Hotel
59 West 44th Street, Manhattan
(212) 419-9331
Through next Saturday

It's almost a rule nowadays that an aspiring performer hoping to perpetuate the prerock crooning tradition of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin should tip his hat to contemporary music by ''Sinatrafying'' something modern. And in ''Last First Kiss,'' his new show at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel, Tony DeSare, a lean baby Sinatra with burning brown eyes and flashing teeth, leads off his program with a swing version of the Prince song ''Kiss.''

It's the only number in his show in which Mr. DeSare dives into relatively recent music. (''Kiss'' was a No. 1 hit 21 years ago, which is actually not all that recent.) But his sly performance establishes the kind of connection to a younger generation that has helped make Michael Bubl? heartthrob among upscale women in their teens and early 20s.

Since I last saw him three years ago, Mr. DeSare has solidified his considerable talents as a swinging, well-mannered singer-pianist whom Simon Cowell might dismiss as ''karaoke'' or ''hotel bar.'' But as he applies his smooth, rather light pop baritone to standards like ''Oh, Look at Me Now'' and ''How Deep Is the Ocean,'' his intonation and enunciation are impeccable.

In the show he talks a lot about the importance of lyrics. If he doesn't authoritatively stamp songs with a personal point of view, he conveys a confident grasp of what they are saying. His pianism is a stylistic hybrid that at its flashiest combines an Erroll Garner bounce with the kind of florid display with which Liberace attacked ''Beer Barrel Polka.'' In Mr. DeSare's solo piano version of ''Fly Me to the Moon'' on Thursday evening, the song certainly flew: it swooped and glided all over the place.

Mr. DeSare performed five original songs, three of them written with Mike Lee, the bass player in his quartet, whose other members include Brian Czach on drums and Bucky Pizzarelli on guitar. ''Let's Just Stay In'' and ''Lover's Lullaby'' showed off his ability to turn out generic traditional pop expressions of polite seduction. STEPHEN HOLDEN

Photos: Tony DeSare, left, at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel; Jane Monheit, above, at the Café Carlyle; Diahann Carroll, right, at Feinstein's at the Regency; and Charlie Louvin, below, at the Gramercy Theater. (Photo by Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times); (Photo by Michael Falco for The New York Times); (Photo by Jennifer Taylor for The New York Times); (Photo by Rahav Segev for The New York Times)