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Venue

New Jersey Performing Arts Center

1 Center St., 07102, Newark, NJ, US

www.njpac.org

Capacity: 3,352

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Additional details

Doors open: 20:00

Concert in your area for Jazz, Funk & Soul, Folk & Blues, and Electronic.

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Gregory Porter biography

Gregory Porter is a Grammy Award winning American jazz/soul vocalist, songwriter, and actor from Sacramento, California who has released three albums to date.

Gregory Porter was born in Los Angeles and was raised in Bakersfield, California, where his mother was a minister. A 1989 graduate of Highland High School, his path was originally leading to a career in sports after Porter gained an athletic scholarship to San Diego State University. However after incurring a shoulder injury during his junior year of high school, his football career was not to be.

Porter instead began recording music influenced by his adoration for blues, soul and gospel. His debut album 'Water' was released in 2010 via Motéma Music and gained the singer/songwriter a nomination for Best Jazz Vocal album at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards. During this time Porter was performing as part of the original Broadway cast of 'It Ain't Nothin' But the Blues'. The second album 'Be Good' was released in 2012 and following his notoriety from critics, it achieved moderate chart success across Europe. Once again critics adored Porter's blues/jazz sound and he picked up his second Grammy nomination, this time for Best Traditional R&B Performance for the album's title track.

The third album 'Liquid Spirit' was released in 2013 after he signed a contract with Blue Note Records (Universal Music Group) and was produced by Brian Bacchus. It was a huge success worldwide, charting within the top 20 of the UK album charts, top 10 in Germany and The Netherlands and cracked the top 200 in the US. This album went on to win Gregory his first Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album supporting the theory 'third time lucky'.

Madeleine Peyroux biography

“Music has the power to soothe the savage breast” asserted the poet William Congreve, articulating that the arts have the power to heal. A notion subscribed to by many, including acclaimed musician Madeleine Peyroux, who in 2017 harnessed the healing power of song for her Anthem album and tour (2018-2019).

In an attempt to address “our torrid political climate”, the artist employed her intimate, personal style of folk-pop songwriting coupled with spellbinding jazz driven delivery to convey thought-provoking reflections on country, self and everything in between.

Madeleine has spent much of her thirty-year career on the road, perfecting the live-performing skills she cultivated as a teenager busking in Paris. “Touring has become part of my make up” says the celebrated musician, “after years on the road, not touring would be hard for my psyche at this point.” The Jazz virtuoso is ready to travel “down the soothing path" again with her aptly titled trio The Dreamers.

Trios have “great dynamic presence” explains Madeleine, “leaving just enough natural empty space around every sound so as to allow the listener to fill that with dreams”. Starting in April 2020, Madeleine Peyroux, keyboardist Andy Ezrin (David Sanborn, Chris Botti, Joe Jackson, Christopher Cross) and drummer Graham Hawthorne (David Byrne, Paul Simon, Harry Belafonte) will weave their spell on audiences across America and Europe.

The three come together to create a lavish bed for Madeleine’s sultry brand of torch song vocals, and self-styled guitar playing. True to Madeleine’s musical style, they appropriate an eclectic list of cover songs and make them their own, as they effortlessly meld romance with modernism, early blues, jazz and rock and roll with the impressionists.

Audiences can expect to hear potent tunes from the politically-charged Anthem, classics from the artist’s extensive back catalogue, originals and much-loved covers. All performed to Madeleine’s trademark high-quality, laidback style, fine-tuned by the trio over the two-year Anthem tour. “With this trio I would like to soothe and be soothed” said Peyroux, "have fun, speak truth and feel good."

The Dreamers’ tour kicks off April 14th and 15th at the Hopewell Theatre NJ and Mahaiwe PAC in Great Barrington Massachusetts on the 17th.

The three will headline at the Exit Zero Festival on the 18th, before playing at The Kate in Old Saybrook, Connecticut April 19th, Jaqua Concert Hall in Eugene, Oregon April 23rd, and Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, California April 25th and 26th.

Confirmed California May dates include El Rey Theatre, LA May 1st,

JaM Cellars Ballroom at Margrit Mondavi Theatre, Napa, May 2nd, and

The Coach House in San Juan Capistrano on May 3rd

Live reviews

I like jazz, particularly vocal jazz, but don't often get the chance to see it live. When Gregory Porter came to The Miller Center for the Arts in Reading, PA, reasonably close to where I live, some friends and I got together and decided to go see him live.

Gregory Porter has a fantastic, smooth voice, perfect for singing jazz music, and performs with a very large instrumental group so seeing him in concert is almost like seeing a symphony orchestra perform. His music is soulful, yet sedate, harmonic and relaxing.

He has, of course, the traditional jazz instrumentation like the piano, brass instruments and saxophone, but his addition of other instruments like flutes, guitars, violins and a variety of percussion give his music a fuller, more complex sound and at least for me, the vocals help to keep me engaged and punctuate the music so I notice the subtle differences in each verse, the voices of the different instruments rising up at different times throughout the song, all creating a wonderful performance well worth your time in going in person.

I would gladly take the opportunity to see Gregory Porter again in concert, and he is well deserving of the Grammy he won for best jazz vocal album.

Anonymous

Sometimes too much value is placed on song-writing. Granted there’s nothing quite like the view into the writer’s soul you get when you hear a deftly written song, but many people seem to dismiss artists out of hand simply because they don’t write their own songs. It’s almost as if the music of any old bunch of clowns with electric guitars just means more than everything else because it “comes from the heart”, even when it clearly doesn’t. What these people don’t realize is that the skill and insight needed for an artist to truly embody and inhabit a song, whether or not it was originally written by them, vastly outweighs the skill needed to string three chords together and rhyme “maybe” with “baby”. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Jazz, where a lot of the great voices of the genre weren’t songwriters in their own right but it never really mattered. In the last ten years few names have emerged that truly rivalled the greats but one in particular could quite possibly join them, and that name is Madeleine Peyroux. Nowhere is how adept she is at interpretation more apparent than in her live performances. Songs by artists as diverse as Hank Williams, Elliot Smith and Randy Newman are all made her own with style and authority. Her voice, understated but clear as a bell, expresses more in a syllable than most vocalists can muster in an entire set. This is music that doesn’t need to shout to make itself known. In all, it’s quiet music. Quietly confident, quietly captivating, and quietly beautiful. A true must see.

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