Gretchen Parlato
Live in NYC
ObliqSound ***1/2 
A summary: this is where we are, crucially in terms of performance. That’s what Gretchen Parlato seems to be saying on this live album recorded in December last year. And it’s a record of achievement as her records Gretchen Parlato, In a Dream, and The Lost and Found all released within the last eight years easily demonstrate. After the dazzle of the opener her signature take on ‘Butterfly’ Live in NYC really enters the zone from the fourth track ‘Within Me’ on. Issued with what might seem to some a less than necessary DVD the singer, a musical heir to innovators such as Urszula Dudziak, Norma Winstone, and Flora Purim in terms of rhythmic and expressive ingenuity, features her two working bands here. But really it's about listening to Parlato who breathes like no other, and manages to tease out inner nuances, the kind of between-the-note innate intuition that marks her out pretty obviously as one of the vocalists everyone needs to hear. Live tells. Released on 25 November