Biography

Gretchen Parlato, born in 1976, is a contemporary musician from Los Angeles, CA. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Ethnomusicology at UCLA. She then continued her Graduate studies at the UCLA Herbie Hancock Institute. She’s worked with remarkable artists such as Herbie Hancock, Kenny Barron, Esperanza Spalding, and Lionel Loueke. The genres in which her music encompasses are vast. Gretchen’s greatest influence and most fond genre is Brazilian music. She goes into depth about her most recent album, Flor: “This is music that I’ve always wanted to honor,” says Parlato. “What I’m trying to find isn’t outside of myself. It’s not out of reach, it’s actually that internal revealing of what already exists.” This grand piece of GRAMMY-nominated work encompasses an amazing fusion of Brazilian, Classical European, Jazz, and many more styles of music. This wasn’t her only GRAMMY nomination though, her album Live in NYC received a nomination for Best Jazz Vocal album in 2015. Her music is unlike any other other in this generation of contemporary vocalists and musicians, she made her artistic philosophy clear with this statement…

“I don’t think it’s as effective for me to sing standards in a standard way. That has been done before, and extremely well, by Billie, Ella, Sarah, Betty, and others. It’s important for me to breathe new life into music, keep it moving, find and tell my own story, and sing a song in a way that no one has before.”