Lovabye (Vinyle LP) / Gregory Groover Jr

Description

Gregory Groover's debut Criss Cross album, recorded on the Boston-raised and born tenor saxophonist's thirtieth birthday, is a tour de force. Backed by a bespoke sextet comprising his favorite, all NYC-based musicians, Groover presents an 11-piece recital of original compositions, paralleling family and friends, whose intentions were anticipated, illuminated, and actualized by his talented bandmates. Lovabye follows Groover's tremendous debut album, Negro Spiritual Songbook, Vol. 2 (The Message), performed by his excellent Boston-based band in a quartet or quintet configuration, contains Groover's arrangements of, as he wrote then, "Black America's praise music through the evolving language of jazz to produce a radical theology that connects you to a higher power," Recorded in August 2019, it was released two years later as society recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic. In spring 2023, he presented this music to Walter Smith III, whom he had idolized since adolescence and is now his friend and colleague at Berklee School of Music, where Groover holds the position of Assistant Chair of the Ensemble Department. "I told Walter that I'd like to play with some of my other heroes and peers," Groover recalls. "He said, 'What's stopping you? The music is there. Luckily for me, everyone I wanted to record with was available and happy to do so'."