Album: Gregory Porter - Christmas Wish | reviews, news & interviews
Album: Gregory Porter - Christmas Wish
Album: Gregory Porter - Christmas Wish
Hallelulah: Christmas gets the Gregory treatment
Thursday, 07 December 2023
The cat in the hat with the mellifluous voice delivers his Christmas Wish for the festive season, his first Christmas album, and it sounds more or less as you would imagine it – tasteful, discreet, soulful, reined in, but richly expressive, and celebrating the spirit of a sharing, caring Christmas.
It comes with some fine orchestral settings arranged by album producer Troy Miller, recording with the Kingdom Orchestra at Abbey Road, while Porter and his excellent band – pianist Chip Crawford, bassist Jahmal Nichols, drummer Emmanuel Harrold, saxophonist Tivon Pennicott and Ondre Pivec on Hammond organ – cut their tracks at New York’s Sear Sound studios.
Porter's voice is a medium you can sink right into, and his classy Christmas album is perfect for a relaxed, warm glow of a gathering, sporting plenty of tastefully interpreted classics – the opening “Silent Night”, “Little Drummer Boy” and an excellent duet with the young Grammy Award-winning jazz star Samara Joy on “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?”. Gentle piano-led ballad “Everything’s Not Lost” is the first of three self-penned songs Porter adds to the mix, with ladles of love, hope, charity and the spirits of caring and giving – especially on title track “Christmas Wish” – sweetening and enriching the brew. His voice is a deep blue velvet set in a warm, firelit chiaroscuro on the lovely “Do You Hear What I Hear?”, while Stevie Wonder’s rousing, percussive paean for equality on “Someday at Christmas” and Marvin Gaye’s languid funk of “Purple Snowflakes” are highlights.
Vince Guaraldi’s Sixties classic “Christmas Time is Here” is a piano-led ballad, fully stocked with Christmas essentials – carols, snowflakes, firesides, sleigh bells, families – and runs to a nifty double bass solo, too, while the closing “Heart for Christmas”, the third of Porter’s originals, brings it on home with a focus on delivering the child’s joy of Christmas back to the adults, too. And tasteful, assured and warm as it is, Christmas Wish may well do just that.
His classy Christmas album is perfect for a relaxed, warm glow of a gathering
rating
Share this article
The future of Arts Journalism
You can stop theartsdesk.com closing!
We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £33,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d
And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
more New music
Music Reissues Weekly: Hawkwind - X In Search Of Space, Doremi Fasol Latido
Must-have box-set editions of two of British rock’s most important albums
Albums of the Year 2024: Samara Joy - Portrait
From Grammy triumphs to sonic odysseys: nine of the year's most transcendent jazz albums
Albums of the Year 2024: Mercury Rev - Born Horses
An exploration of inner space, freeze-dried electronica, French nursery rhymes and more
Albums of the Year 2024: Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso - Baño María
Art that creates it's own (deliriously wild) lane
Albums of the Year 2024: Kneecap - Fine Art
The music sector finely emerges from the long shadow of Covid with a bumper year
Albums of the Year 2024: Kenny Barron - Beyond This Place
Consistently glorious - nothing less than a very great album
Music Reissues Weekly: Vanilla Fudge - Where Is My Mind The ATCO Recordings 1967-1969
A wild ride with the ‘You Keep me Hanging on’ hitmakers
Albums of the Year 2024: Meemo Comma - Decimation of I
A concept album from the perspective of an infected planet provides succour and sustenance
Albums of the Year 2024: Amelia Coburn - Between the Moon and the Milkman
An array of albums that have set 2024 alight for this writer
Jesus & Mary Chain, O2 Institute, Birmingham - Reid Brothers refuse to join the heritage industry
Noise veterans deck the halls with feedback and dry ice
Album: Ajukaja & Mart Avi - Death of Music
Estonian electronica duo enter a domain where nothing is explicit
Album: Ben Folds - Sleigher
Folds’ nuanced originals are much better than the by-numbers seasonal covers
Add comment