Gregory Porter
Cork Opera House
★★★★☆
The California vocalist and songwriter Gregory Porter sometimes gets labelled as a soul, gospel and even pop singer. Not that there’s anything wrong, of course, with being associated with such storied musical styles. Porter would be the first to acknowledge the debt he owes to such versatile soul and R&B singers as Donny Hathaway, Bill Withers, Marvin Gaye and Ray Charles – and to his Pentecostal-minister mother, who encouraged him to sing in church from an early age.
Over recent years he has also, unexpectedly and relatively late in his improbable career, become something of an international star, a one-man industry that wins Grammy awards, plays the world’s major concert halls, appears on chatshows and hosts his own cooking series. Porter has not played in Ireland for seven years, and the 1,300 tickets for this first of two shows at Cork Opera House, as part of Guinness Cork Jazz Festival, sold out within 10 minutes. Popular may be too weak a word.
At heart, though, Porter is categorically and uncompromisingly a jazz singer, and he and his long-standing touring band bring a free-flowing sensibility to the music and venue. Before Porter enters the stage to whoops and cries from an enthusiastic audience, his quintet slips into the breezy opening tune, Holding On, almost as if they are playing a club date.
The leader also gives plenty of room for his group to shine and stretch out, most notably the searing alto saxophonist Scooter Brown. Stepping to one side, hands placed firmly in the pockets of his beige double-breasted suit, Porter sways and nods appreciatively; these are not musicians afraid to show their jazz pedigrees and chops.
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For all this, the focal point of the stage solidly remains the charismatic 6ft 5in 52-year-old – in his trademark newsboy cap with a modified strap covering his ears and chin – and his resonant, romantic and richly textured baritone.
Announcing at the beginning of the concert that he and the band plan “to go through our Rolodex of songs” (which gives some indication both of Porter’s old-fashioned slant and the main age range of the couple-heavy audience), the singer presents an almost two-hour spin through many of his greatest, mostly self-written tunes. While the biggest cheer of the evening is inevitably reserved for Hey Laura, Porter standards such as Liquid Spirit, Take Me to the Alley, Mister Holland and Musical Genocide are no less rapturously received.
Along the way there is Porter’s very winning marriage of invincible love, social conscience, happy clapping and positive energy; “it’s raining outside, but we’re warmly sequestered inside,” he says, mellifluously, at one point. Just occasionally, you crave a less simplistic lyric and more gravel in the voice. Yet this is the perfect way to launch the annual long-weekend Cork party, and represents the festival at its best: jazz that reaches out beyond its borders and welcomes you in.
