Jazz great Gregory Porter brings uplift to downtown Boston

Gregory Porter had a busy Martin Luther King Jr. Day, or at least a busy Martin Luther King Jr. Day morning.

Porter was with his family, strategically planning a breakfast of steak and eggs and investigating a tube amp on eBay when I called. That the jazz baritone's life was paused at the intersection of sound and food was almost too emblematic of that artistic life. Music and food are, after all, bonded in their own culinary alchemy.

"The palate of what I love and the flavors that I enjoy have expanded so wide now, that has changed my cooking," Porter said. "And I know music is the same. Once I've been exposed to something, when it gets in your hands, your voice, your mind, musically — it's hard to take that away."

Porter has spent the past two years creating and releasing new music, even as he was limited by the pandemic when it came to performances (he said he could count on two hands his shows in the United States and Europe). Now he is glad to be back on the road and playing for more live audiences.

We spoke a few days before he was due to play the Emerson Colonial Theater in a return to Boston — a city whose venues, he said, carry a "stamp of validity." Playing New York is a given for most jazz musicians, but road-tripping north into New England's center of gravity remains a necessity for one's jazz bona fides.

Travel is a job requirement for almost any professional musician. In Porter's case, it’s more like a way of life (or to be corny, a life requirement). He estimated once playing upward of 250 shows in a single year. Porter chuckled at the idea of some R&B singers he knows, talking about how they would play five shows in a month he would put on 25 or even 30.

To state the obvious: Once the COVID-19 pandemic reached American shores, that travel component and all the excitement that came with it — the intimate moments with the band, the camaraderie of fellow musicians, the food, that youthful joy that arrives with the prospect of retiring to one's favorite place — was put to an abrupt halt. But music doesn't stop. Such is the consequence of being a physical sound force.

While the artistic sector ceased its flurry of activity during the pandemic, creators found themselves with a lot of extra time and figured out ways to push their music directly to the people (see: DJ Nice, Verzuz, the occasional livestream from Igor Levit's apartment). Porter remained busy, too, joining the ranks of artists who managed major label releases. "All Rise" arrived in August 2020, and compilation "Still Rising" dropped in November 2021. But that period of adjustment and the slower pace that it necessitated meant that Porter could spend a lot of time reflecting on his life's mission and his art.

Porter lost his 49-year-old brother to COVID-19. Not long after, the singer himself turned 50, but it was a difficult milestone.

"My brother was so alive, and he didn't make it to 50," Porter said.

Looking back on his own legacy, Porter is concerned with uplifting his listeners and celebrating love, along with all its nuances.

Even with a 2020 studio release and a 2021 compilation, he doesn't necessarily consider this upcoming slate of shows a pure tour in the traditional sense, where the music revolves around the latest records.

"I'm like a DJ with my music. I play what I feel is most appropriate at the time; I really don't deal with the what is the latest hottest thing off the press for me" he confesses. "And what's immediately on my chest is undying love, irrepressible love."

Water imagery surrounds Porter's art. On the album artwork for "All Rise," he emerges, impeccably dressed in a brilliant suit (either white or blue, depending on how your interpret the reflection of the light) from the brilliant, shimmering stillness of a triangular luxury pool. In the lyrings, he sings of rivers and rains, of drowning and tears. He recalls his mother's sermons often returning to such aqueous themes, but in his own work, that obsession might be a bit more subconscious.

"Over the course of maybe 30 or 40 years, if I get the opportunity to continue to record, maybe I will have said a proper suite of music that deals with water," he surmises.

But right now it bubbles up in a great deal of his work. His music, one could say, is of a hydrating variety, and ever necessary so long as this sometimes-bitter world can leave us in need to a drink.