Gregory Porter | News | INFOTEXT: Gregory Porter "Christmas Wish"

Gregory Porter ist dafür bekannt, ein ausgesprochener Familienmensch zu sein. Und als solcher liebt er selbstverständlich auch die Weihnachtszeit. Dass er kein „Grinch“ ist, hat er bereits in weihnachtlichen Duetten mit Anita Wilson‚ Renée Fleming und Paloma Faith gezeigt. Sowie auf seiner Nat-King-Cole-Hommage, für die er 2017 Mel Tormés “The Christmas Song” einsang.

 Nun legt er mit “Christmas Wish” sein eigenes Weihnachtsalbum vor, das er mit seiner langjährigen Band, gelegentlicher Orchesterverstärkung und einem speziellen Stargast als Duett-Partnerin aufgenommen hat. Natürlich interpretiert er auf dem Album mit unverkennbarem Porter-Bariton einige zeitlose Weihnachts-klassiker. Darüber hinaus gibt es in Porters Repertoire aber auch eine Auswahl von Liedern, die seltener zu hören sind. Mit seinem eigenen Songwriting gibt Porter dem Album zudem eine gesunde Portion Motown-Soul mit. Gewidmet hat er diese neuen Songs seiner Mutter und seinem vor drei Jahren an Covid verstorbenen älteren Bruder.

“Christmas Wish” ist kein Weihnachtsalbum von der Stange, sondern ein sorgfältig konzipiertes Werk, das nicht nur treuen Fans von Gregory Porter einige Weihnachtswünsche erfüllt. 

In the best possible way, Christmas comes early this year. Presenting, with his customary class, elegance and sophistication, Gregory Porter’s ‘Christmas Wish’ – a cool yule selection of festive favourites as well as brand new songs written by the man himself. 

Backed by his long-time band, produced by repeat collaborator Troy Miller in New York and London, with orchestral contributions recorded at Abbey Road, and featuring a powerhouse guest vocal from double Grammy-winning sensation Samara Joy, the jazzman’s seventh album is his loving tribute to his favourite time of year – and to great songwriters, singers and interpreters including Sammy Cahn, Frank Loesser, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. 

“Christmas is hugely important to me,” says Porter. “And hugely important to my family. It’s the moment in the year that’s reset time. That’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot over these last couple of years. We all do it: I’m going to love better this coming year. I’m going to do better this year. I’m going to give more this year.” 

That sense of renewal and revival, and also of sharing and caring, is there in Porter’s trio of original songs. Elegant piano ballad ‘Everything’s Not Lost’ is Porter’s persuasive plea to remember those less fortunate than ourselves at the moment when, as he sings, “Christmas and New Year are coming on strong”. 

“That’s the energy of the song,” he explains. “Christmas is a time where we’re just all supposed to just be thinking of Christmas trees and Jelly Rolls. But let’s also consider the other things that are going on in the world. I’m always thinking of balance. So I sing: 'Help me just to pass this test of time, I wish that I was blind, strange thing to wish for, but I just can’t unsee all this misery…’. That has been instilled in me, and it keeps coming up in a lot of my music. At your highest, at your greatest, at your most pleasant time, don’t forget about other people who are suffering. This is another one of those moments in my music.” 

Powered by Hammond organ, the title track has a finger-snapping energy that evokes the joy that his mother spread at Christmas: before she cooked for her family, she made Christmas lunch for those less fortunate in the Porters’ Californian neighbourhood.

“My mother would do things with such energy that it would convince you to come along. It was like we were on the march to do something good! You know: ‘Listen here babies, gather your things, let’s get the pots ready, put them in the car…’ There was so much ebullience in her giving, and that’s why the song sounds that way. I was condensing into poetry and melody how she would be moving so quickly that you jumped aboard.”  

There are spiritual homages, too, to his brother Lloyd, who succumbed to Covid in 2020.

Across its dozen tracks, ‘Christmas Wish’ encompasses the saintly and the secular, the funky and the fun, the Great American Songbook and the best of Motown. 

It opens with Porter’s spine-tingling take on Silent Night, and offers his shimmering, hymnal take on ‘Little Drummer Boy’. That latter “is one of those ubiquitous Christmas songs that that gets a remake every so often,” he acknowledges. “But the heft of the bottom end of the song, the drone in the weight of the drums, and the lyrics all give me the ability to identify with that story. I was also a poor boy, but do I have something worthy of the king? I appreciate the fairness and equality in that king. It’s a dope thought to me.” 

‘What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?’ is a different kind of standard, written in 1947 by Frank Loesser. Porter is joined by Samara Joy, the 23-year-old powerhouse talent who won Best New Artist and Best Jazz Vocal Album at this year’s Grammys. 

Elsewhere, two titans of soul are given their flowers: Porter honours Stevie Wonder on a cover of his 1967 track ‘Someday At Christmas’, and he honours Marvin Gaye in the “cool and quirky” ‘Purple Snowflakes’, which Gaye recorded in 1964. 

He effortlessly scales a different tower of song on ‘Christmas Waltz’, penned by Sammy Cahn and a mid-century American classic. 

“Frank Sinatra’s version in particular has the joy I love about that song. There’s the thing about that style and that time of writing, where the joy was automatic within the song. When I was little, I would remember the line ‘this song of mine in three-quarter time’ – what are they talking about?” he recalls with a laugh. “Not understanding music at the time, that always intrigued me. Now I know there are many Christmas songs that are in three-quarter time, and it’s just the feeling of Christmas. Also,” he adds, “the ending line is just fantastic: 'And I hope every single new year’s dream comes true for you, I do, I wish this for you’ – I love a song that leaves the wake of a good feeling.” 

That loving care and attention to detail – lyrical, spiritual, emotional – runs throughout and around Christmas Wish like the best kind of festive wrapping. When he was making his song selection, Porter learned of the inspiration behind ‘Do You Hear What I Hear’ – it was the writers’ plea for world peace at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a message that went global when Bing Crosby had a huge hit with the song. 

He also divined beautiful meaning in another song with radically different roots: ‘Christmas Time Is Here’ was originally written as an instrumental by jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi for 1965 animation classic ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’. 

“I just love that descriptive nature inherent in so many Christmas songs,” Porter expands. “Just laying out your wishes and your dreams, and putting into the minds of people all over the world that it’s a time for peace, for gathering together, and for expressing love.” 

The final bow on Gregory Porter’s Christmas gift for everyone is another original. ‘Heart For Christmas’ finds the singer in elegiac mood, recalling the magic of the festive seasons of his earliest years. 

It’s a fitting end to the album, enveloping the listener in the embracing, enlightening glow of a set of songs curated with care, love and festive warmth. With ‘Christmas Wish’, Gregory Porter has given us a whole new soundtrack to this most wonderful time of year.

 

GREGORY PORTER “CHRISTMAS WISH” LIVE
05.12.23          Düsseldorf      Mitsubishi Electric Halle
06.12.23          Münster         MCC Münsterlandhalle 
08.12.23          Lübeck             MuK
09.12.23          Hamburg        Elbphilharmonie
16.12.23          Frankfurt        Alte Oper

 

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