Music

Gregory Porter

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

Keith Bruce

four stars

FULL house for a jazz concert in Glasgow Royal Concert Hall? You had better believe it. And one of the many admirable things about singer Gregory Porter is that he is keeping a crack sextet on the road, and giving rich opportunities for adventurous soloing to all of his sidemen. They seize these with glee too, pushing tunes like the relatively schmaltzy I Wonder Who My Daddy Is? into uncharted waters.

Although he was cheered to the rafters by the capacity audience, it is possible that anyone there expecting some sort of Nat “King” Cole tribute concert left disappointed. His hero and subject of the most recent album was mentioned plenty, but only really zoomed in on when the band left the stage to Porter and pianist Chip Crawford for Mona Lisa and Smile. The jazzier demands of Nature Boy were rolled into his own Musical Genocide (I Do Not Agree) alongside Sam Cooke’s Change Gonna Come and, courtesy of Crawford, Scotland the Brave.

A fatherhood theme embraced a cover of The Temptations’ Papa Was A Rolling Stone as well as Porters’ bracing address to his own son, Don’t Lose Your Steam. The singer’s personal narrative also included unlikely tales of his American footballing past as part of a kilt-wearing high school side called The Mighty Scotsmen and the insistence that the subject of Hey Laura (also from his breakthrough Liquid Spirit album) was Scottish and prone to sporting a full-length plaid skirt in Brooklyn.

Although the set was built around Porter favourites, opening with Holding On, which Disclosure revised for the dancefloor and including the title track of 2016’s Take Me To The Alley as a passionate Easter Hymn, and bows out with Sly Stone’s unique way of saying Thank You, there is a looseness about it that makes it clear that these guys would be performing in exactly the same way for a tenth of the crowd. And that’s jazz.