Opening Night of the Miami Nice Jazz Festival featuring Gregory Porter

South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center. October 25, 2013, 8:00 p.m.

The Miami Nice Jazz Festival and South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center are co-presenting jazz vocalist Gregory Porter. The event marks the Opening Night of the second Miami Nice Jazz Festival.

Gregory Porter is an American jazz and soul singer, songwriter and actor from LA, now living in Brooklyn. He has received two Grammy nominations, one for his debut album, Water, released in 2010 by Harlem-based label Motéma Music and second for his sophomore release, Be Good. Reviewing his star-making performance at this summer’s Newport Jazz Festival, NPR claims, “Here’s the next great male jazz singer. The forthcoming Liquid Spirit is great, but he’s even better live, surrounded with a long-running band that knows what he’s after and enables it splendidly. As he might say, clap your hands now.”

At the start of 2010, the buzz about Los Angeles-born and now Brooklyn-based jazz/soul vocalist Gregory Porter was a strong, steady murmur, fueled by a growing crowd of fans who’d caught his performance in the Tony and Drama Desk Award-nominated Broadway hit, It Ain’t Nothin’ but the Blues, or his weekly stints at the Harlem club, St. Nick’s Pub.

A disarmingly sincere performer, with a groove that never quits, a voice of incredible virtuosity and a seemingly universal appeal as a songwriter, Porter’s lyrics often speak as dreams do, in the languages of image and emotion, to communicate thoroughly though not always directly. His objective as a songwriter, he says, is “to create a sincere message about my feelings on love, culture, family and our human joys and pain.” Even in conversation he leans toward the poetic: “Just like the song ‘Painted on Canvas’ says, ‘I’m ‘made of the pigment of paint that is put upon’ …trying to be honest and organic in my colors that I show.” Be Good clearly attains that goal, and also proves to have a wide palette of colors to show.

Admission is $25-$46 and tickets are available at www.smdcac.org or by calling the Box Office at 786.573.5300. For more information about the festival visit www.miaminicejazzfestival.com.

The South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center
10950 SW 211th Street
Cutler Bay, FL 33189
786.573.5300
www.smdcac.org

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