Gretchen Parlato’s The Wise Ones collects twenty years of songs

An album whose songs were written across twenty years is usually called a compilation. “The Wise Ones” is not being called one. Out on 11 September via Edition Records, its eleven tracks set new Gretchen Parlato writing beside older pieces that had never been placed anywhere — and all of it was recorded now, in Los Angeles, then mastered in New York.

She produced it herself with Alan Hampton, with additional production from Mark Guiliana and Dave Stapleton as executive producer. An album built this way is a kind of audit: the writer going back through two decades of her own work to decide what still holds.

The players are long-standing company — Robert Glasper, Gerald Clayton, Mark Guiliana, Alan Hampton. The guest list runs the other way: Meshell Ndegeocello, Becca Stevens, Amber Navran, Josh Mease, musicians for whom her singing was once the reference point. Parlato calls the result a generational circle.

At fifty she describes working from balance, gratitude and presence, and the whole record turns on a single question: how do you honour who you were while accepting who you are becoming? The first song available is “Rainbow”.

Records that look back like this usually arrive later in a jazz singer’s life, once there is nothing left to prove. This one arrives early, which is what makes it worth hearing: the twenty-year-old songs are not filed as archive, they are filed as now.