GREGORY PORTER

I think sometimes you can be around somebody and take in certain energy and read certain things and you don't know why your neck is stiff. But if you can recognise the negativity, once you identify it and you know what you are dealing with you can make a point to counteract it with a different energy.

My mother was a minister, so I grew up in a church. My grandfather was a minister; there are a bunch of ministers in my family.

I heard Smokey Robinson was singing one of my songs on the radio the other day. Being in the presence of Mavis Staples, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott - Stevie Wonder joined me on stage recently. That blows me away.

I'm happiest in nature, in trees, rivers, streams, and I'm happiest around my kid - you know that's the funny thing, he is not always in the best of moods, but I am always happiest around him and in nature. Around my family is where I am happiest.

It's been some surreal moments, you know from performing at Buckingham Palace to having dinner with Stevie Wonder, it's been an amazing ride.

But sometimes that title 'jazz' can vex people who think they know exactly what jazz always is and will be.

I was 5 years old when I first broke into my mother's records and played Nat King Cole, and sat alongside the stereo and listened to Nat's music.

How can you sing a line like, 'I've fallen out of love' when you're 18? You need to experience something of life before you can sing it.

The songs I write and the way I see the world have been affected a certain amount since I became a father.

I lose my bags all the time. Sometimes for two months. One of the worst times was when I had come from France and I had packed cheese, because I was really crazy about camembert, so I have this really nice suit that stinks of camembert, no matter how many times I dry clean it.

I think part of my job as a songwriter is to go back in my memory and pull up those pains for other people because somebody else is going to come along who didn't have a good issue with their father.

You'd think we'd be exhausted by that rhetoric but you're still able to move people with fear and fright and lies that somebody's going to take your place, that in order for someone to rise, you have to fall.

My part of Brooklyn has always been a very warm neighbourhood, even before I had anything going on in the music industry. When I step out of my house to go for coffee on Saturday mornings, I might say hi to 20 people before I get to the cafe. I think they feel they own me, in a way.

I can sing the blues and I have sung the blues. I feel it internally when I'm singing.

I like to absorb the atmosphere and explore wherever I'm working or visiting, so I can't say there's any type of place I don't like. When you travel you have to be open to new experiences.

I love wandering around the vintage shops.

A professional music career goes in starts and stops. Around 2000 I was doing a Broadway show and that was some real good energy.

I consider myself a jazz singer. I think I stick to the roots of improvisation, singing in front of the beat, behind the beat, playing with notes and harmonies.

When there's an imbalance in terms of what people get to hear, then that's negative. Then blues, jazz, it will die.

Even if you've being playing together for years, there'll always be something new. You're constantly back phrasing, front phrasing, singing faster, singing slower.

There's a lot of female singers and I don't want to dismiss them, but the male - and I have to be careful - the black male voice in jazz, whatever you say, is an important voice, because there's a tradition of the music that should be touched on, there's a sound that should be touched on.

If I can hear the music then no, I don't hit a wrong note. But if I can't hear the music because the audience is screaming or the sound system is bad, then I'm subject to stray.

And I've made it a choice on my records that sometimes I leave the breath or the trailing note that sometimes falls into a flat or a sharp.

Being a singer, it's feast or famine. You have to hit it when it's hot.

The best career advice was to sing with an understanding and internalise the music - that was my mother's advice. Sing with intention, believe what it is you're saying, and think about it, before you sing it.