The Montreal International Jazz Festival presents

Gregory Porter

Gregory Porter’s sixth studio album All Rise, marks a return to Porter’s beloved original songwriting — heart-on-sleeve lyrics imbued with everyday philosophy and real-life detail, set to a stirring mix of jazz, soul, blues, and gospel. Produced by Troy Miller (Laura Mvula, Jamie Cullum, Emili Sandé), the set also represents the evolution of Porter’s art to something even more emphatic, emotive, intimate, and universal too. After 2017’s Nat King Cole & Me, Porter knew two things: one, he’d bring in an orchestra for his next LP, and two, music is medicine. In the spirit of that latter revelation, All Rise brims with songs about irrepressible love, plus a little protest, because the road to healing is bumpy.

“Yes, you could say that I went big,” says Porter about his latest, which combines the talents of his longtime loyal bandmates, a handpicked horn section, a 10-member choir, and the London Symphony Orchestra Strings. “But, quite frankly, the way I write in my head, it all happens with just voice and piano first, and it’s built up from there. It feels good to get back to the rhythms and the styles and the feelings and the way that I like to lay down my own music from start to finish.”

Like many concerned citizens these days, he’d found himself obsessed with the politics of the day, every new song morphing into a response to the powers that be. “We hear the phrase All Rise when presidents or judges come into the room,” says Porter, “but I’m thinking all of us rise — not just one person being exalted. We are all exalted and lifted up by love. This is my political thought and my real truth. It comes from my personality, my mother’s personality, the personality of the blues, and of black people. It’s this idea of making do with the scraps, of resurrection and ascension, and of whatever the current situation is, it can get better through love.”

Though Porter had an acclaimed role in the original 1999 Broadway cast of It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues — and staged his own Nat King Cole & Me musical in 2004 — it was inevitable that he’d became known for his songs. Both of Porter’s indie albums — 2010’s Water and 2012’s Be Good — received Grammy nominations, paving the way for his world-beating 2013 Blue Note debut, Liquid Spirit, which won the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album. He hasn’t let down his legion of fans since, whether collaborating with Disclosure on “Holding On,” scoring another Grammy for Take Me to the Alley (2016), or telling his life story through Cole’s songbook. Porter is still surprised by his runaway success, but he has a theory: “I was soothed by my voice as a child and I think that’s the same thing others get from it. I’m trying to heal myself with these songs.”

Gregory Porter, July 1, 7pm at Maison Symponique
Tickets at: www.montrealjazzfest.com

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