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"It’s a beautiful thing to sing through your vulnerability in a song. Then it's just about honesty and purity of the music... To me, it’s as if the music is this higher power above all and bigger than all of us. It’s about being a true artist and serving the beauty of the music, not your ego." >> read interview in English
"It's a very spiritual experience that makes me very much in touch with myself, what's going on in my body. Especially when I'm performing, there's that sense of feeling really grateful to have musicians around me, the audience connecting with the lyrics. In short, it's a very intimate thing for me to do that brings me a lot of peace." >> read interview Open to Possibilities "There's nothing like conversation with others, sharing this art and having the audience there to support you, encourage you. You feed off the energy and it moves the music to a different space." >> read interview
"it was really just realising how to be a better musician – how to drop my own ego and not let it get in the way of me growing. When you come out of it [Thelonious Monk Institute] you realise this was a heavy, heavy thing, and the greatest part is it makes you realise what you want and don’t want in music and even in life... To me, what I do has always been very pure, natural and simple in its approach. Sometimes you’re not even aware of the steps that you’re making, but it’s a wonderful thing that, in turn, by just expressing what I love myself, other people have loved it too. " >> read interview Women of Jazz "The first time I saw Gretchen perform live was in New York. She was freaking me out," remembers [Esperanza] Spalding... "Here was this skinny little white girl putting out this wonderful music," she jokes. "I was covered in goose bumps." >> read interview Gretchen Parlato and Esperanza Spalding: "Just the fact that players like that know me and like what I do is completely humbling," she says. "Jazz is such a broad word for a genre of music. Artists like Herbie and Wayne haven't been stagnant, they haven't tried to keep jazz inside one box. They know the only way it can live is if it moves forward. I'm grateful to have artists like them influencing us and taking us on tour." >> read interview Sultry Gretchen sizzles "THE phone rings three times before voicemail picks up. A piano sounds in the background, introducing the sultry voice of American jazz artist Gretchen Parlato, crooning: "Please leave a message and I'll call you back, and l'll call you back . . ." >> read interview KPFK - Global Village >> listen to performance & interview Critically Acclaimed Jazz Prodigy Visits Australia for the First Time "Hailed by critics as a female Frank Sinatra, winner of the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Vocals Competition... Gretchen is renowned for her ethereal sound and fusion of jazz, Brazilian and African elements." >> read article
"Donning a blue wig and performing a whacky improvisation of a very senior citizen awaiting her boyfriend’s arrival, the absolutely comedic woman on the [myspace] video is obviously blessed with talent... Miss MacKenzie is the alter ego of the very talented and equally beautiful jazz vocalist Gretchen Parlato, whose ethereal vocals have caused seasoned jazz musicians and singers to marvel at her seemingly endless musical gifts."
Gretchen Parlato reinterprets bossa nova at La Villette Jazz Festival Interview with Morrie Louden "She is a very special, I will say musician, she’s a singer, but she is also a musician. She is very well studied and knows music very well. A lot of singers don’t know much about the theoretical part of music, they just sing, which is a great thing too, but Gretchen is also a musician. She understands everything that she is singing. Beyond that, she has the most amazing angelic voice."
KRML Interview with Leroy Downs Gretchen Parlato - "I have always been exposed to music where voice was used in really different and unique ways, so it seems very natural for me to continue [to] bridge the gap, so to speak, between singer and instrumentalist. So many people have done that before me. It's just an important thing, as a singer, to be educated, so that you are speaking the same language as instrumentalists around you – and just being humble and letting go of your ego and singing from your heart and not your head all the time." |
