gretchen parlato

Jane Cornwell, Jazzwise ★ ★ ★ ★

Three years after 2023's Lean In, a collaboration with guitarist Lionel Loueke, the American jazz singer-songwriter Gretchen Parlato gifts us The Wise Ones, a close-miked, finely shaded album of songs…

by Jeff Becker, Jazz Sensibilities

Gretchen Parlato can make quiet singing carry considerable musical allure. Her tone can be intimate, her dynamics restrained, and her phrasing relaxed enough to suggest that a melody is simply settling into its surroundings. With…

Modern Drummer — October, 2026

Gretchen Parlato’s The Wise Ones is one of the best records of the year. She is a fantastic singer who avoids all classification, and Mark Guiliana’s drumming (on every track) helps her straddle genre and…

Gretchen Parlato isn’t making her debut. She’s been composing her own tracks and lyrics and dropping her own supple, sweet song since her turn-of-the-century self-titled first album. And yet, with her recently released The Wise Ones, the bossa-inspired mistress…

— snappy grooves and languid covers from always-arresting jazz singer
by John Fordham, The Guardian

With guests including Robert Glasper, Parlato turns her immaculate phrasing to soft funk, dancefloor numbers and interpretations of Stevie Wonder and Tears for Fears

Hearing…

**** Downbeat Magazine

Gretchen Parlato redefined jazz singing by adding touch of soul, R&B, pop, Brazilian music and other genres into her style. She continues pushing boundaries on The Wise Ones. The creative arrangements, Parlato’s vocal approach and an all-star…

By Will Layman

In a world that features billion-dollar pop divas (you know their names) and incredibly creative and technically dazzling jazz musicians (you have never heard the names of all but a tiny few), singer-songwriter Gretchen Parlato sits in…

By Thierry De Clemensat, Paris-Move

Gretchen Parlato returns with The Wise Ones, an intimate contemporary jazz album featuring Robert Glasper, Alan Hampton and Becca Stevens, blending jazz, soul, pop and Brazilian influences with remarkable sensitivity.

Gretchen Parlato’s The Wise

"The combination of skill and artistry that has characterized her career is on full display in the songs from her latest album, The Wise Ones."

 —Imani Raven, Shatter the Standards

Gretchen Parlato won the Thelonious Monk Institute's 2004 International…

— Nate Chinen
The coolly aerated vocal style that Gretchen Parlato brought to modern jazz in the mid-aughts — laid-back yet locked-in, with Brazilian and R&B influences finding common cause with the enlightened Herbie-and-Wayne cohort — created a lane so…

“has the same spell-weaving qualities of her earlier vocal work: a close-to-the-mic intimate timbre, immaculate jazz phrasing and faultless pitching and intonation.”

by David Shiers, 8/28/2026 - UK Jazz News 

 Some fifteen years after her award-winning breakthrough album, In…