Photograph: Andy Sheppard/Redferns
Gregory Porter certainly attracts a broad demographic. There are twentysomething ravers who’ve heard him guest with Disclosure, old-school R&B fans who’ve been introduced to him by Gilles Peterson, and fiftysomething couples for whom he’s a fixture of tea-time telly.
The key to this mass appeal is his material. Where so many jazz musicians have forgotten how to write a decent tune, Porter’s simple, direct songs have an emotional heft. He is able to constantly reinvent his melodies in an incredibly musicianly way: on rambunctious new tracks like Don’t Lose Your Steam, he’s a pulpit preacher declaiming his sermons; on Holding On, Consequence of Love or Insanity, he’s a 70s soul loverman finding countless ways to seduce his audience.
Yet this is not a show that ever compromises its jazz elements, and Porter’s six-piece band are given room to breathe. Pianist and musical director Chip Crawford switches between ecstatic, skronky solos and delicate comping, while alto saxophonist Tivon Pennicott plays pretty far out in places.
If there’s a slight reservation with Porter, it’s those rather too self-conscious invocations of a golden age. Songs like Musical Genocide and On My Way to Harlem act as threnodies for a supposedly lost black culture, as are the constant lyrical nods to Langston Hughes, Marvin Gaye and Donny Hathaway, and the covers of Papa Was a Rolling Stone, The In Crowd, Work Song and Nature Boy. Just think how much more thrilling Porter’s baritone might be if it pushed in more futuristic directions.
Opening the show is Kandace Springs, a striking soul-jazz pianist and singer from Nashville, much beloved of Prince. The radio-friendly original material on her upcoming debut LP, pitched somewhere between Porter and Norah Jones, slips down comfortably. But in a noisy auditorium eager to hear the headliner, it’s her soaring, melismatic covers of The Nearness of You and The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face that silence a restless crowd.
