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Parlato, Spalding truly on track
to become legends
By Elaine Schmidt
Special to the Journal Sentinel
Feb. 17, 2008
Lots of young musicians are hyped as "rising stars" by their publicity machinery, but few ever really reach the skies. ...it was clear that these two have the musical chops to become legends. Every sound Parlato makes is part of the musical fabric...
Sax and Jazz on Every Floor
JAZZ A LA VILLETTE 2007
Oct 2007, Evene.fr - Mathieu Durand and Rémy Pellissier
"Long after, one will remember
the romance of Gretchen Parlato"
>> see festival photos
Blindfold Test
Richard Bona, Downbeat
July 2007
"Beautiful voice. The pitch,
everything is perfect...
She sings beautifully...
5 stars."
Thinking Global
David French, Downbeat
July 2007
"Her relaxed style meshes perfectly with Loueke's rolling rhythms and lulling melodies. Their performances are some of the highlights on Virgin Forest. In March at the Zinc Bar in Greenwich Village, they presented a magical musical chemistry as they blended their voices and traded parts and ideas like smiles. They packed the club like the subway at rush hour, but the patrons were dead quiet, save for the duet's harmonizing, Parlato's caxixi and Loueke's guitar."
Lionel Loueke - Virgin Forest
REVIEW Allmusic
by Michael G. Nastos
"the alluring singer's bossa-tinged, soaring, or bird-like sounds a perfect compliment for Loueke...pay attention to Parlato in the future; she is a special artist."
Morrie Louden - A Sideman Breaks Out
Phillip Booth, Bassplayer
Dec 2007
"Louden leading first-call instrumentalists - including saxophonists Bob Sheppard and Seamus Blake, guitarist Lionel Loueke, drummer Adam Nussbaum, and sultry young singer Gretchen Parlato on one of the year's best-reviewed jazz CDs."
Gretchen Parlato - "Her rhythms buoyant and percussive, her pitches precisely calibrated, her phrasing idiomatic and her spirit resolutely improvisitional."
Youth and creativity on display
Don Heckman
Los Angeles Times
Oct 7, 2006
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The future of jazz is alive and well in the hands of artists such as Gretchen Parlato and Lionel Loueke... Together, they make an irresistibly engaging musical combination... Parlato's voice was a flowing, mobile instrument. At times it blended seamlessly with Loueke's guitar, often in tandem with Loueke's singing. At other times, her warm sound -- a persuasive blend of innocence and irony -- found the heart of tunes... And everything she sang revealed her capacity to become immersed in the music without losing her own interpretive way.
Vocals, bass collide
in powerful concert
Journal & Courier, by Tim Brouk
Oct 14, 2007
"Two of the brightest, young female talents in the jazz scene owe their musical prowess from the ultimate source -- their mothers.
When she was 13, Parlato, who would earn No. 3 on the Rising Star Female Vocalist list in the 2007 Downbeat Critics' Poll, was digging through her mother's old records before stumbling upon Stan Getz, Antonio Carlos Jobim and other bossa nova artists."
Parlato, Loueke enhanced their chops
at the Thelonious Monk Institute
Andrew Gilbert
The San Diego Union Tribune
September 28, 2006
“Gretchen is like my twin sister musically,” Loueke said after a performance with his trio at the Monterey Jazz Festival earlier this month. “It's almost like we're reading each other's minds. At the Monk Institute, we were playing every day, so we definitely developed a cohesion.”
Lionel Loueke CD Release Party
with Gretchen Parlato at the Vic
LeRoy Downs aka "The Jazzcat", KRMLradio.com
Oct 11, 2006
"Gretchen Parlato's soft angelic vocal qualities, warm as Brazilian breezes, encompass the room and fill our souls with the lovely sound of soft kisses and caressed bodies... I find myself waiting to exhale after every song.... At the moment, the world outside our musical haven does not exist."
NYC
Winter JazzFest
A.D. Amorosi
New York Press
Jan 9, 2005
"You could spruce up the compliments and say "voice like angel" and compare her to Sinatra in terms of dynamics and subtone, or Chet Baker in terms of cottony cool. You wouldn't be far off the mark. Parlato's sense of subtle rhythmic interplay and understated theatrical nuance takes the ache of Frank and implicates it throughout an improvisational-based esthetic that rests, most often, on Brazilian master-class moments from Caymmi and Jobim as well as classics by Parker, Gershwin and Bjork. As simple and restive as she sounds in print, her voice—scatting, cooing, leaning back then soaring—can leap through complex tempo and rhythmic shifts as if riding rapids."
SONG OF THE DAY
A Rising Star Makes a Worldly Jam
John Murph
NPR.org
June 1, 2006
"With so much emphasis on virtuosity in jazz, artists who pare their musical arsenals down to the soul-baring essentials usually prove the most alluring. Such is the case with singer Gretchen Parlato..."
CD REVIEW
Distinctive New Voices
in Jazz
KPR
March 2006
"Gretchen Parlato's impressive debut CD is sure to thrill jazz lovers. Parlato charts an original and beautiful course... she demonstrates a mastery of Brazilian music"
Singer Finds the Essence
Underneath The Words
Ben Ratliff
New York Times
December 7, 2004
"She enters the music, becoming part of the band, improvising in melody and rhythm, prying open sweet spots in the songs... it's evident that she's an extraordinary singer."
Philadelphia Citypaper.net
Shaun Brady
Jan 7, 2005
"...her breathy, Brasiliana-tinged vocals escape her throat in sinewy lines that trail off with a flute-like warble. Forgoing the brash, staccato bursts of hipster scat favored by most jazz singers, Parlato wields her voice like a post-bop instrumentalist, face scrunched into a grimace, fingers working the microphone like it was a trumpet, words barely formed dissolving into plaintive wails... her method is born at least as much from intellect as it is from passion."
gp & lionel loueke
performed with wayne shorter
joe's pub newsletter
thursday january 13 . 2005
"Tonight we had a party celebrating the publishing of Michelle Mercer's rightfully acclaimed new biography of Wayne Shorter, Footprints. For the party, Michelle invited a favorite of Wayne's, rising star vocalist and Thelonious Monk prizewinner Gretchen Parlato to perform, and she did two songs accompanied by a brilliantly inventive guitarist I hadn't heard before, Lionel Loueke from Benin, who used a secret arsenal of sparse effects and loops. Their brief set was already killing when they invited Wayne himself to join them on soprano sax and went into a medley of some of Wayne's tunes. An amazing moment to treasure. And with an audience filled with luminaries - veteran and youngbloods - Herbie Hancock who took the redeye in to introduce the show, Ron Carter, Amiri Baraka, Wallace Roney, Claudia Acuna, Uri Caine, Anat Cohen, Avishai Cohen, Lea Delaria - you get the picture - inspiration was high."
Gretchen Parlato, David Devoe, Julie Hardy:
New Singers Showcase at the 55 Bar
Michael P. Gladstone
allaboutjazz.com
December 7, 2004
"Parlato's poise and stage presence
belied her age and experience level."
She does it her way
L.A. vocalist Gretchen Parlato's 'intimate' style
of jazz wows the judges at the annual Monk competition.
Don Heckman
Los Angeles Times
October 1, 2004
"I really just want to make beautiful music — music that people will listen to and feel something," she says. "Because the music that touches me the most always creates some kind of a mood and a vibe. And that's what I'm looking for in my music too."
Jazz Hopefuls,
Trying for the Sound of Success
 photo- Ronnie James |
Ben Ratliff
New York Times
September 15, 2004
Her talent was so deeply centered and concentrated... The set included a scat version of Charlie Parker's "Embraceable You" improvisations; an "I Fall in Love Too Easily" that suggested Chet Baker's dry-toned version but superimposed hints of a lavish, Donny Hathaway melisma; and a hard-swinging version of "Chega de Saudade," sung in excellent Portuguese.
On Monday, in the finals, a concert held at the Kennedy Center and filmed by BET, Ms. Parlato did it again. Relatively unmannered, with accurate pitch, she didn't copy older singers or overemote; she just calmly nailed a ballad and a medium-tempo piece with improvisations, interacting with the rhythm section at its own level.
It's Ladies Night
at Monk Jazz Competition
Mike Joyce
Washington Post
September 15, 2004
"Parlato joins the ranks of pianist Marcus Roberts, saxophonist Joshua Redman and other well-known jazz artists whose recording careers were jump-started by a Monk competition win.
Parlato didn't have to wait long to reap an unexpected benefit: After listening to her charm the judges and the audience with a sultry rendition of "More Than You Know" and a lithe, scat-laced, tempo-shifting interpretation of "I've Never Been in Love Before," jazz great and Kennedy Center Artistic Director for Jazz Billy Taylor invited her to perform at the venue next season."
Vocalist Gretchen
Parlato Wins
and General Myers Loses
at the Monk Competition
17th Thelonious Monk International
Jazz Vocals Competition
Larry Appelbaum
Jazz Times Magazine
September 14, 2004
Gretchen Parlato won first place in the 17th annual Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition finals on Monday night at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. Parlato, a New York City-based singer... displayed near-perfect intonation, distinctive behind-the-beat phrasing, and creative, melismatic scat in her winning versions of “More Than You Know” and “I’ve Never Been in Love Before.”
Sophistication and Brazilian Rhythms
of Gretchen Parlato
Don Heckman
Los Angeles Times
August 29, 2000
"If you liked Astrud Gilberto, you'll love Gretchen Parlato. Although she was born more than a decade after Gilberto recorded her classic bossa nova albums with Stan Getz, Parlato has a similarly pure, sweet voice and an intuitive knack for Brazilian rhythms... Parlato revealed a level of musical sophistication not always present in Gilberto's singing."
Young Vocalist Shows Charisma,
Talent,
Maturity
David Steinberg
Albuquerque Journal
August 1996
"Rarely does a jazz singer come along whose voice instantly sweeps you off your feet."
