"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."
Gretchen Parlato won the Thelonious Monk Institute's 2004 International Vocal Competition, and no one who's heard that contest-winning performance will have any problem understanding why. The Los Angeles singer showed total mastery of technique in performing with a confidence earned through years spent developing her unique approach to rhythm and melody. Yet she wasn't afraid to pull the microphone in close and sing underneath the band rather than over it. The combination of skill and artistry that has characterized her career ever since is on full display in the songs from her latest album, The Wise Ones, produced by Alan Hampton, who not only plays guitar, piano and bass on most of the sessions but also sings beside her. Parlato co-wrote all the material on the album with Hampton—much of it drafted when he had just begun playing alongside her, shortly after her triumph at the Monk Prize. Acclaimed songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello contributes a verse to "Never Come Down," and Amber Navran pulls a whole verse out of the title song. "Sometimes the wiser isn't older," she disputes, her lines handed off by Parlato to gain the advantage of tiny hands and open minds. The youngest entry is Marley, son of Parlato and drummer Mark Guiliana, who holds a voice credit on "Block the Sun," a song about the sun crossing 90 million miles of space to find people in their doom and gloom. The verse he joins settles the age question, insisting that light matters and that it is not too late or too soon. Either way, twenty-two years have elapsed since Gretchen stepped off the Monk stage, and it's hard to imagine what greater compliment could be paid her than the material itself.
—Imani Raven, Shatter the Standards