Boston jazz saxophonist Gregory Groover Jr. comes into his own on 'Loveabye'

When Gregory Groover Jr. was a budding jazz saxophonist, he would play a game of fantasy jazz band with his friends, where they’d mix and match their favorite musicians to come up with a dream combo.

Groover did the same thing before recording "Loveabye," his first album of all original compositions out now. “I figured if I’m going to dream, I should dream big and think of the people who really inspired me. And, beautifully, they all said yes.”

The crew that recorded the album with Groover last August on his 30th birthday — vibraphonist Joel Ross, guitarist Matthew Stevens, pianist Aaron Parks, bassist Vicente Archer and drummer Marcus Gilmore — have all been heard on some of the most influential jazz records of the past few years. And thanks to Groover’s own dreamy, thoughtful and uplifting compositions and playing, the record — released on the storied Criss Cross label — is likely to introduce one of Boston’s busiest jazz heroes to a much wider audience.

Groover, whose first two releases were his interpretations of the “The Negro Spiritual Songbook,” grew up in one of Boston’s most historic houses of worship. His father, Rev. Gregory Groover Sr., is the longtime pastor of Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church in Roxbury.

“There’s an old saying that when you have 100 worshippers in a Black church, 20 of them will be there for the preacher, and the rest came for the music,” laughs Groover Sr.

When the church became affiliated with the Hamilton-Garrett Center for Music & Arts, Groover Jr. was in the first class, and the program led to him going to the Boston Arts Academy and on to Berklee College of Music with a full scholarship. Groover’s sister, Gerami Groover-Flores, followed a similar path into music and is now Hamilton-Garrett’s executive director. Groover Sr. says his children “were surrounded by quality music enrichment and education, and have been able to go deeper and deeper into the musical ocean because of what Boston offered.”

A week after Groover Jr. got his master's degree in 2017, a teaching position at the Boston Arts Academy opened up. “But I still wanted to play, so I made a point to make sure that I had several gigs a week, whether it was at places like Wally’s or Darryl's Corner, or later on, the ICA and Scullers,” he says.

Four years later, he joined the Berklee faculty. Accomplished musicians who also had Berklee teaching careers, like saxophonist Walter Smith III and trumpeter Jason Palmer, became important mentors, and remain so. Smith produced “Loveabye,” and Groover is celebrating the album’s release with a Regattabar concert on Friday, May 3 with a band that includes Ross, Stevens and pianist Kris Davis, and then playing in Palmer’s band for a Mandorla Music concert in Dorchester on Saturday, May 4.

The idea for “Loveabye” germinated at another Mandorla concert that Groover played early last year where his compositions were center stage. Afterward, Groover “was talking about growing as a musician and wanting to grow his career, and we were talking about his favorite musicians, and I said ‘You write all of this music. You should do an album with the musicians that you love,’” recalls Smith, who produced the album.

Groover came up with a set of compositions that were tributes to, as he puts it, “love songs and people I love.” The first time he played “In For A Pound Or Penny” was at Wally’s the last weekend it was open in March 2020. During lockdown, he revamped the song while thinking about how much he missed playing with Palmer. “May All Your Storms Be Weathered” is a tribute to the church community that Groover grew up in. “5660” honors Groover’s godfather Jason Murray, who was murdered in 2022. The song’s title represents the last four digits of Murray’s phone number.

Groover’s jazz is a unique combination of influences, says Smith. “You talk to a lot of saxophone players and the first names they’ll mention are John Coltrane and Charlie Parker, and while those are part of Gregory’s sound, so is the music he heard growing up in the church,” he says. “And then one of his other early musical influences was the Carpenters, and he’s obsessed with John Mayer. So it gives an interesting color to the music that he writes and the things that he goes for when he’s improvising.”

Smith says that even though Groover had detailed plans for the sessions, once they started recording a lot of his songs followed a different path. “For example, ‘Cactus Lullaby’ was written for the whole band but ended up as a saxophone/guitar duet with Stevens,” says Smith. “The music that he writes can exist in many different versions, and that’s a mark of a thoughtful composer.”

Although Groover has enjoyed being part of a tight-knit crew of Boston musicians who regularly play together, he says, “Walter [Smith] really encouraged me to put myself in different scenarios that would make me play differently. He kept reminding me to get rid of any preconceived notion of what this music was going to be.”

In between college and grad school, Groover spent a year in New York, but he’s proud to have carved out a busy and impactful life both playing and teaching in his hometown.

Now the assistant chair of ensemble at Berklee, he says that when it comes to musicians who feel like they have to choose between teaching or playing, “I want to be a champion for showing that you can do both.”