Gregory Porter had a busy Martin Luther King Jr. Day, or at least a busy Martin Luther King Jr. Day morning.

Porter was with his family, strategically planning a steak and egg breakfast and investigating a tube amp on eBay when I called. That the jazz baritone’s life stopped at the intersection of sound and food was almost too emblematic of this artistic life. Music and food are, after all, linked in their own culinary alchemy.

“The palate of what I love and the flavors I enjoy has expanded so much now, it’s changed my cooking,” Porter said. “And I know music is the same thing. Once I’ve been exposed to something, when it gets into your hands, your voice, your mind, musically, it’s hard to take it off.”

Porter has spent the past two years creating and releasing new music, even though he’s been limited by the pandemic when it comes to performances (he said he could rely on both hands for his shows in the States United States and Europe). Now he is happy to be back on the road and performing for more live audiences.

We spoke days before he was due to play at the Emerson Colonial Theater during a return to Boston — a city whose venues, he said, carry a “stamp of validity.” Playing in New York is a given for most jazz musicians, but traveling north into New England’s center of gravity remains a necessity for jazz bona fide.

Travel is a job requirement for almost all professional musicians. In Porter’s case, it feels more like a way of life (or being nerdy, a requirement of life). He estimated that he once played over 250 shows in a single year. Porter laughed at the idea of ​​some R&B singers he knows, talking about how they’d play five shows in a month, he’d put on 25 or even 30.

To state the obvious: once the COVID-19 pandemic hit American shores, that component of travel and all the excitement that came with it — the intimate times with the band, the camaraderie of fellow musicians, the food , that youthful joy that comes with the prospect of retiring to one’s favorite place – was abruptly cut short. But the music does not stop. Such is the consequence of being a physical sonic force.

As the arts sector cooled off during the pandemic, creators found themselves with plenty of extra time and found ways to push their music directly to people (see: DJ Nice, Verzuz, the occasional livestream from the apartment of Igor Levit) . Porter also kept busy, joining the ranks of artists who handled major label releases. “All Rise” arrived in August 2020, and the “Still Rising” compilation dropped in November 2021. But this period of adjustment and the slower pace it entailed allowed Porter to spend a lot of time thinking on the mission of his life and his art.

Porter lost his 49-year-old brother to COVID-19. Soon after, the singer himself turned 50, but it was a difficult step.

“My brother was so alive and he didn’t hit 50,” Porter said.

Looking back on her own heritage, Porter is keen to uplift her listeners and celebrate love, with all its nuances.

Even with a studio release in 2020 and a compilation in 2021, he doesn’t necessarily view this slate of upcoming shows as pure touring in the traditional sense, where the music revolves around the latest records.

“I’m like a DJ with my music. I play what I think is most appropriate at the time; I really don’t care what’s hottest in the press for me” confesses- he. “And what is immediately on my chest is eternal love, irrepressible love.”

Water imagery surrounds Porter’s art. On the ‘All Rise’ album cover, he emerges, impeccably dressed in a shiny suit (white or blue, depending on how you interpret the reflection of the light) from the shiny, shimmering stillness of a swimming pool. triangular luxury. In the lyrics, he sings of rivers and rains, drownings and tears. He remembers his mother’s sermons often returning to such watery themes, but in his own work this obsession might be a bit more subconscious.

“In maybe 30 or 40 years, if I have the opportunity to continue recording, I may have said a good suite of music that deals with water”, he supposes.

But right now it’s bubbling up in a lot of his work. His music, one might say, is of a hydrating variety, and always needed as long as this sometimes bitter world can leave us craving drink.