Greg Porée
Greg Porée is a classical guitarist, arranger, producer and composer from Los Angeles.
Greg began his career in Los Angeles in the mid 60’s playing and teaching guitar. The 60’s were an exciting time for music and Greg was active in the LA music scene while getting his formal training at Cal Arts. His first major break came in early 1969 when he became musical director for Sonny & Cher on the recommendation of the great alto sax player Harold Batiste. During that time Greg was also actively writing with his sister Anita Porée & best friend Jerry Peters for the hit RCA group Friends Of Distinction. In 1970 Greg took an offer from Motown to become musical director and creative consultant for Gladys Knight and the Pips. This began a long association with Motown and over the next few years Greg was musical director and guitarist with such acts as Diana Ross, The Supremes, Thelma Houston, GC Cameron and Syreeta Wright. Greg also played on numerous Motown recording sessions with Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Stevie Wonder, The Four Tops, and The Jackson 5. Other artists Greg traveled with during the 70’s included Paul Anka, Sammy Davis Jr., Aretha Franklin and Isaac Hayes, but with the birth of his sons Emile and Justin, Greg no longer wanted the road life. He channeled his skills into becoming a top LA studio guitarist working with an amazing range of musical talent such as Donald Byrd, Randy Crawford, The 5th Dimension, Benny Golson, Aretha Franklin, Ahmad Jamal, Syl Johnson, James Brown, Al Green, Albert King, Teena Marie, Phoebe Snow, Dusty Springfield, The Originals, Donny Osmond, Edwin Starr, Stanley Turrentine, Lenny Williams and Joan Baez.
Two major events that shaped Greg’s career came in the mid 70’s and in the early 90’s. It was in the mid 70’s Greg met the composer/conductor Dominic Frontiere who at that time was an executive at Paramount Pictures. Dominic started hiring Greg as a guitarist for various films and TV shows which eventually led to working as a guitarist/arranger/orchestrator for such films as Casey’s Shadow, Dr Detroit, Foul Play, Jungle Fever, Mahogany, Used Cars and Woman In Red. The TV shows included Bustin Loose, Charlie’s Angels, Laverne And Shirley, Growing Pains, Mod Squad, Knots Landing, Night Court, Vegas, Starsky And Hutch and The Martin Lawrence Show. This period in Greg’s life inspired him to do more composing than playing and that’s been his primary focus to this day.
In the late 80’s Greg met an amazing singer named Vinx. The two of them worked on and off until in 1989 Vinx was signed to the new Sting/Miles Copland label Pangaea. Vinx asked Greg to be part of the production team along with Sting and engineer John Eden. The result was the classic CD Rooms In My Fatha’s House. Greg went on to produce two more CD’s with Vinx, I Love My Job and Storyteller. Although the CD’s were critically acclaimed sales were poor and Pangaea was eventually dropped but Greg had been bitten by the producer bug. Aside from the Vinx CD’s, this time saw Greg write the music for the Martin Lawrence Show and the Robert Townsend variety show Townsend Television with long time friend and guitar great Paul Jackson Jr. Greg also produced the highly acclaimed CD Angry Southern Gentleman featuring Charlie Terrell for Virgin/Pointblank Records.
Greg’s activities since the millennium include scoring 5 thesis films for the American Film Institute, teaching at the prestigious Henry Mancini Institute, arranging for the National Symphony Orchestra and NAACP Image Awards
Greg’s sons have become outstanding musicians in their own right. Emile Porée is one of LA’s finest jazz guitarist/composers as well as a documentarian for the avant garde jazz scene in Los Angeles. Justin Porée is a percussionist/composer and one of the founding members of the Grammy Award and Alma Award winning latin rock band Ozomatli. Greg writes, records and performs with his sons. Greg’s own acoustic guitar compositions are available on CD. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
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