Gregory Porter (vcl); Chip Crawford (pno); Aaron James (bs); Emanuel Harold (dms); Yosuke Sato (alt).
(Review by Lance).
Gig of the year? Gig of the Century - any century!
It was standing room only for the sardines - sorry, fans - sandwiched into Hoochie. I opted for a vantage point next to the fire door, just in case, and the flames that Gregory Porter was igniting on stage made this a distinct possibility!
What a performer! I missed out on seeing him at the Royal Albert Hall last October but how could that compare with seeing him on stage only a few feet away?
A richly timbred voice that reverberated around the room - this was the 21st century version of, say, Billy Eckstine or Johnny Hartman, truly as classy an act as has ever graced the stage of a Newcastle club since the halcyon days of La Dolce Vita back in the 1960s.
Predictably most of the material was from his Grammy winning album Liquid Spirit reviewed here last year but hearing it live added a totally new dimension.
Not that this was a one man show, Tokyo born, New York based, altoist Sato unleashed a fireworks display of his own with some awesome playing - this has been a good couple of days for alto saxes at Hoochie!.
At the Steinway (yes a grand piano no less) Crawford gave our man the cushion he needed whilst James and Harold completed the comfort zone.
This was one of those nights to remember forever - you probably only get half a dozen of them in a lifetime - in years to come the old folks will tell their grandchildren "I was there"!
Lance.
4 comments :
Perfect review!
Thanks for the card Lance! It was nice talking to you in Hoochie! What a gig!!! It will live long into the memory! I remember turning on a few occasions to one of the people next to me and us laughing at each other because of how good it was! "What's going on" were the words coming out of our mouths on at least a few occasions! Thank you Gregory!
Having now lost GP to the masses I can only be grateful to him for playing Hoochie Coochie after chasing him for over 3yrs. Truly a night to remember & be proud of for us.
Three years ago people were telling me how fantastic Gregory Porter was live; like Sam Dees at Fleetwood or Maze at Hammersmith. I went to see him at Cheltenham cos Ravi Coltrane was on as well.
Ravi wasn't very good (I've seen him at Leeds since and he was great) but GP was terrific; not as good as I'd been told but better than I expected. However, I did feel that this was a moment in time which I only just caught before he went to the masses; not cos he's that fantastic - he only really has 3 great songs - but the hype evaporated and I was no longer interested in him, which is just as well cos you couldn't get tickets to see him after thaty anyway.
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