Mike LeDonne & The Groover Quartet - Turn it Up! LIVE At The Sidedoor! (2025) [Hi-Res]

The concept of these recordings is to give the listener the complete Groover experience as you would hear it live in a club. Many recordings today are limited for time so you don’t get the full experience of hearing solos develop and people stretching out like you do on live dates. And then there’s the energy of the audience feeding the band which I think is an essential part of playing music. These recordings were made as if we weren’t recording at all so the listener gets a completely uninhibited performance that sounds great.

Releasing these 2 recordings together gives the listener a 25 year span of The Groover Quartet. It is very rare to have bands that last decades these days and it’s interesting that we have live material from back in the beginning and from right now. When we recorded the Anniversary Quartet it was back when I first started really focusing on using tunes by the R&B groups I grew up listening to and making them into vehicles for swinging and for improvisation.

The Original Groover Quartet, or “OGQ” are some of the baddest cats on the planet bar none. We were all so young when we started, well at least they were, I have 10 years on them. We’ve been friends for decades, started our families during our time together and have been all over the world. They are my musical family and I think you can hear that in the music.

Mike LeDonne - Hammond B3 Organ
Eric Alexander - tenor saxophone
Peter Bernstein - guitar
Joe Farnworth - drums