Everyone’s favourite behatted jazz giant was back at the Albert Hall, basking in his adopted UK national treasure status and gifting us tracks from his much anticipated fourth album, Take Me to the Alley. Porter’s mighty baritone, velvety in the mid-range, stentorian in the low, curled languorously through the sold-out auditorium, bathing the ears of those up in the gods and, with ballads such as Hey Laura and a stripped back Holding On, giving the rest of us an aural neck massage.
First on, though, was rising star Kandace Springs, a Tennessee singer and jazz pianist with a sweetly powerful voice; her take on Roberta Flack’s Killing Me Softly was a show-stopper.
Then came our Grammy-winning headliner, padding on after his five-strong band, saxophonist Tivon Pennicott, Hammond organist Ondrej Pivec and pianist and music director Chip Crawford among them. Singing about life and all its vagaries with the restrained maturity of one who’s lived it. Stretching out notes, oozing conviction, making hard-to-sing songs seem easy. Leaving space for instrumental passages, particularly on the punchy Don’t Lose Your Steam, with its biting sax solo and piano-bass-drum backbeat.
If familiar tunes — Liquid Spirit, Free, a cover of Papa Was a Rolling Stone — sparked cheers and sing-a-longs, new numbers such as the swoonsome Don’t Be a Fool and Take Me to the Alley’s title track, with its gospel-tinged lyrics about Christ’s compassion, had more measured responses — which the album’s May 6 release should remedy.
The crowd was on its feet for 1960 What?, a lengthy Civil Rights anthem with catchy riffs and coiled fury. “Peace and love, dear ones,” said Porter. “Peace and love.”
Gregory Porter plays the Eventim Apollo, W6, on April 28 (eventimapollo.com, 0844 249 1000)
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