The icon of jazz is coming to Mannheim

Gregory Porter—this towering man, who is always kind to life and people, with a voice like a cozy, warm, gently crackling fire—is reminiscent in many ways of the mythical bird, the phoenix. 

It is no coincidence that our main sponsor, the PHOENIX group—a European leader in pharmaceutical wholesale, pharmacy retail, and services
for the pharmaceutical industry—gave us our name. In addition to its proverbial ability to constantly renew itself and its transformative power, the phoenix is also known for its healing tears and magical song.

And because Gregory Porter is admired and celebrated worldwide as the very embodiment of this magical singing—or, rather, of incomparable vocal beauty—the idea for an extraordinary pairing was quickly born. With the warm timbre of his smooth baritone, Porter has brought a new sound not only to jazz but to music in general. The love shown to the singer by his audience—who are overwhelmed within seconds and at times emotionally moved to the most beautiful extremes—shows that we can connect to nothing as quickly and unreservedly as we do to the human voice. “We are all elevated and uplifted by love,” says Porter, describing this process as a shared soaring experience.

A Loss as a Beginning

Gregory Porter owes it to his mother that he became a singer at all. When she lost her battle with cancer, he was 21 and had, not long before, been forced to give up his dream of becoming a professional football player due to a serious sports injury. The memory of a sentence spoken by his dying mother ensured that—albeit only after years of mourning—he found the courage to devote himself entirely to music: “Your singing voice is the best thing you have, so don’t forget it.” Yet she had meant much more than that, as Porter only came to understand later: “My mother pushed me to follow my dream,” he summed it up in an interview with *The Guardian*. The experience of grief has imbued this great voice with something comforting: the healing power of that beauty which can only be found within oneself. So today, we can imagine Gregory Porter as a happy person—also, or perhaps precisely, because he sings for others and, in doing so, fosters a deep sense of connection every time.

Gregory Porter’s voice is a kind of wellspring from which not only the audience has long been drawing inspiration. The AI-generated, morphing-based male soul-jazz voices that are popping up like mushrooms practically without exception contain elements of the singer’s vocal timbre or unmistakable references to it. It may only be a matter of time, but all these artificial voices still lack two essential aspects for perfection: the words of a loving mother, a life audibly lived, and thus a corresponding soul that points beyond the music. This is what *Die Welt* means when it describes Porter as “the gentle giant who preaches with his baritone”: authentic intensity. Therefore: Let’s enjoy this heartwarming, lifelike experience. Let’s allow ourselves to be gently embraced by the wings of this phoenix and carried away weightlessly.