“A pretty swinging affair. With this outing, Gabrielle Stravelli proves herself to be a quadruple threat and force to be reckoned with: singer, musician, lyricist and actress. With a well-trained voice, an impressive range and a controlled vibrato, she and her estimable colleagues literally run the gamut of musical styles here: scat-to-opera, primitive-to-modern, low-tech, high-tech. She reaches such a dramatic intensity that I almost have to place her in Sondheim strata. What can you say? What a voice!”
— BOB DOROUGH, PiANiST, SiNGER, SONGWRiTER & JAZZ iCON
“Just when the shore of song seems lost for all the fog, the voice of Gabrielle Stravelli cuts through like a lighthouse of emotional integrity. Dream Ago is the third outing from this award-winning singer/songwriter and largely consists of original material...
Dream Ago spreads Stravelli’s talent into its full spectrum, looking into her past for variations of color. The whimsical “Cake Of My Childhood” takes listeners on a culinary journey through her formative years, while the melancholy title track, written for her late father, offers an honest assessment of grief. Other songs are formidably upbeat. For “Little Zochee,” Stravelli pens lyrics to a Thomas Chapin flute solo, while “Didn’t You Tell Me” puts a feminist twist on things and reveals one of many obvious inspirations (in this case, the Andrews Sisters). Stravelli indeed channels a rainbow of interests, from balladic Joni Mitchell (“More”) to 1980s Gloria Estefan (“Now I Know”) and k.d. lang (the masterful “If Only Love Was Blind”).
Despite these introspective sojourns, Stravelli is outgoing at heart. Her duet with guest vocalist Kenny Washington (“Bicycle Blues”) is a highlight, as is the album’s opening statement, Cole Porter’s “Dream Dancing,” which reclines in a blissful arrangement. Whether through the Rodgers and Hammerstein standard “It Might As Well Be Spring” (rendered with rare tactility) or “Where Is The Song?” (a song written by Bob Dorough for Diana Krall, who never recorded it), the band flows wherever she goes, and we are nothing if not lucky to come along for the ride.”