Gretchen Parlato
2024 GRAMMY NOMINEE FOR BEST JAZZ VOCAL ALBUM FOR LEAN IN WITH LIONEL LOUEKE
PROJECTS:
Since the early 2000’s award winning vocalist and songwriter Gretchen Parlato has justly earned a reputation as one of the most inventing and mesmerizing vocalists of her generation. In 2021 she released FLOR, a project honoring her love and admiration of Brazilian music and her first studio recording in nearly a decade. “This project is a reflection of a time of putting myself aside and being completely present as a mom,” says Gretchen. “I’m finally able to find the balance between artistic creativity and nurturing motherhood. My purpose has both a higher and deeper meaning. There is a story to tell, now…of who I am in this role, and how that is reflected in the music.” The album has earned Gretchen her second Grammy Award nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album.
Featured on over 85 albums, and four as a leader, Gretchen received her first Grammy Award nomination for Live in NYC (2013) and a coveted 4.5 star review from DownBeat Magazine with the DVD hitting No. 1 on the iTunes best music video list. The Lost and Found (2011) received more than 30 national and international awards, including the DownBeat Jazz Critics Poll No.1 Vocal Album of 2011 and iTunes Vocal Jazz Album of the Year. Her 2009 sophomore release, In a Dream, was JazzTimes Critics Poll Vocal Album of 2009 and hailed by Billboard as “the most alluring jazz vocal album of 2009.”
GRETCHEN PARLATO & LIONEL LOUEKE DUO: LEAN IN
A long-awaited collaboration between GRAMMY-nominated vocalist Gretchen Parlato and acclaimed guitarist Lionel Loueke, Lean In tells the story of 20 years of connection, inspiration and friendship between two musical soulmates.
The very first duo recording from two musicians who have performed together for more than two decades, Lean In is all about healing, deep trust, love and family. In a time when warmth and compassion are needed more than ever before, both artists felt compelled to make a record sharing songs of inspiration, reflection, wonder and unity, with the title encouraging us to ‘lean in’ to ourselves and to those around us.
The intimacy of the duo songs reveals the depth of the trust and connection between the two artists at the core of the music, an intensity that gradually unfolds and blossoms out into a larger, universal whole as they are joined on the record by members of their families: Mark & Marley Guiliana, Lisa Loueke, & close friend Burniss Travis.
Both Gretchen and Lionel are individually renowned for the extraordinary mastery of body and voice in their music enabling them to create intricate, infectious rhythms. Fans will undeniably be excited to hear what happens when these two rhythmic virtuosos come together – the two styles seamlessly intertwined – and the resulting sound is truly magical: soothing yet joyful and full of light with Gretchen’s love for Brazilian music and Lionel’s West African roots shining through – it’s like nothing you’ve ever heard before! Released on May 19, 2023 on Edition Records, this really is a record for the soul.
Co-booked with Arcartists
PRESS QUOTES:
“Her voice is a conflux where hope, sensuality and tragedy all merge… the most original jazz singer in a generation.”
Boston Globe
“…transfixing…she fashions a mellow, drifting sound informed by Brazil and Wayne Shorter and organic R&B.”
The New York Times
“Gretchen Parlato is a singer-arranger of consummate control and slow-burning intensity… lives at the crossroads of sensuous and spiritual, singing from deep within hypnotic grooves with enormous rhythmic sophistication.”
DownBeat Magazine
