Be Good | soundsfromthedarkside

Summer is here! And that means a new edition of North Sea Jazz is also here once more to pump up the quality of the Dutch festival landscape. Like always the festival lineup is packed with some great names. What to think of Quincy Jones, Stevie Wonder, Pharrell Williams, Sun Ra Arkestra, Dave Holland, Outkast and Pharoah Sanders, just to name a few. No wonder the festival was sold-out well in advance. Yesterday, around five o’clock, spectators began to pour into thirteen areas of the Ahoy venue, eagerly awaiting an evening filled with jazz, blues, R&B, soul and funk. So, enough chit chat now, let’s kick-off this live review of North Sea Jazz’s friday the 11th of July.
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Lets face it, Gregory Porter is all about superlatives. With his impressive appearance and magnificent voice Porter is among today’s top jazz vocalists. Since the release of the debut album Water (2010) everything he touched turned into gold. Water was enthusiastically welcomed by the press and received a Grammy nomination in the Best Jazz Vocal Album category. In 2012 his sophomore release Be Good proved to be just as successful as its predecessor. Be Good was a number-one debut on the iTunes Jazz Album Chart and reached top ten positions on various other charts. Moreover Porter was honoured with another Grammy nomination for the single ‘Real Good Hands’. Recently I saw Gregory Porter perform on the North Sea Jazz Festival with the Metropole Orchestra and, to throw in another superlative, it was breathtaking. Porter is on a high, so there´s no surprise a new release in 2013 was on the stocks. Beforehand there was no reason for fans and critics to worry about quality of Liquid Spirit, for Indeed the brand “Gregory Porter“ already stands for high quality jazz and soul. I However am obliged to uphold a critical attitude to all that´s hyped and hip and therefore question if the towering achievements of Porter
don´t lead to a case of the Midas touch. Continue reading →