Gretchen Parlato

Gretchen Parlato was included in several year-end lists with her album ‘The Lost and Found’. She is blessed with one of the most seductive timbres in jazz and has an amazing sense of rhythm. Like many Brazilian singers she seems to have the knack of eschewing bars. She creates drama with a whisper-voice and surrounds herself with a skillful band.

Gretchen Parlato won first place in the jazz vocals competition of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in 2004 and has been at the centre of a lot of attention since then. Her voice is sensual, intriguing even, her phrasing unique. This was underscored even more as her vocals became more intimate and understated. She succeeds in sucking her audience into her songs. John Fordham wrote the following in the Guardian: “Think Astrud Gilbero with Norma Winstone’s harmonic sophistication and a contemporary rhythmic hipness fuelled by New York’s eclectic downtown scene”.

Gretchen Parlato burst on the scene in 2009 with her album, ‘In a Dream’, which marked the arrival of a creative and inventive singer. On her most recent album, ‘The Lost and Found’, she once again demonstrates her skill while developing a broader spectrum. “I feel like I stepped out of my own way and allowed myself to be more revealing and vulnerable through the music”, she says. The first thing you notice is that Parlato is singing in a more personal voice. Coping with resistance, learning to embrace the tides of life: that is the theme of her album: One day we may think we’ve found all the answers, and then something suddenly happens that makes us feel completely lost as though nothing makes sense. This is life. Accepting that we are always in transition without attaching a judgment to the experience is freeing.” Hence the title, ‘The Lost and Found’.