Gretchen Parlato - Relationship With ObliqSound

Relationship With ObliqSound

In July 2008 Parlato signed a recording contract with independent record label ObliqSound. In Spring 2009 Gretchen was featured in The Documentary Channel's 4-part series "Icons Among Us: Jazz in the Present Tense". In August 2009 she released her second CD, In a Dream, on the ObliqSound record label, with Lionel Loueke on guitar and vocals, Aaron Parks on piano and Fender Rhodes, Derrick Hodge on acoustic and electric bass and Kendrick Scott on drums. The album was produced by Michele Locatelli. It was named No. 1 Best Vocal Jazz Album of 2009 by the Village Voice Critics Poll and was listed in the Top 10 Albums of 2009 in JazzTimes, Boston Globe, Washington City Paper, Hot House and NPR.

In Spring 2010 she was nominated for Female Singer of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association. In June/July, Parlato performed at Stockholm and Healdsburg Jazz Festivals, and sold out jazz festival performances in NYC, Montreal, Paris, North Sea, Copenhagen, Stuttgart and Molde, Norway, with Taylor Eigsti, Alan Hampton and Mark Guiliana. In August, she was voted No. 2 Rising Star Vocalist in Down Beat's Annual Critics Poll.

In 2011 she released her 2nd album for Obliqsound, "The Lost and Found" with Taylor Eigsti, Derrick Hodge, Kendrick Scott, Dayna Stephens, Alan Hampton, with associate producer, Robert Glasper. On this album, she wrote lyrics to Eigsti's "Without a Sound;" Ambrose Akinmusire's (trumpet) "Henya," and Stephens' "Lost and Found. She also sings a duet on the track "Still", with Hampton. "Alan created such a meditative and deceptively simple groove I wanted to write lyrics that were like a mantra. Something that in its repetition becomes extremely powerful. What better theme than love?".

Parlato also composed many songs on the album such as "Winter Wind," "How We Love," "Better Than", and "Circling". "Circling" was a major piece on the record because "'Circling' plays with the idea of cycles in our lives. The ones we have no control over like birth and death as opposed to the cycles we do control, behavior patterns that we get ourselves into." In addition to her compositions, she reinvented popular R&B songs by Mary J. Blige, Lauryn Hill, and Simply Red. The album "The Lost and Found" shows that Parlato possesses the ability to alter and compose songs into something meaningful and interesting.

"The Lost and Found" placed in the top 10 in over 30 polls in the US and Europe.
Some of the most notable 2011 awards:
ASCAP Award of Merit for Songwriting
No. 1 Rising Star Female Vocalist - DownBeat's Annual Critics Poll
No. 1 Female Vocalist of 2011 - JazzTimes Expanded Critics Poll
No. 1 Vocal Album - 2011 Jazz Critics Poll
No. 1 Vocal Jazz Album of the Year - iTunes
No. 1 Best Album of the Year - JazzFM.com
No. 2 Best Jazz of 2011 - NPR
No. 2 Best Jazz Album of 2011 - Amazon
No. 3 Top Female Vocalist - Down Beat's Annual Readers Poll
Featured vocalist on Terri Lyne Carrington's Grammy Award winning album, The Mosaic Project

2012 Awards:
No. 1 Best Female Vocalist Award - Jazz Journalists Association
No. 2 Best Female Vocalist - DownBeat's Annual Critics Poll