Canadian trumpeter Bria Skonberg has been busy since moving to New York City in 2010. No stranger to Sacramento having performed at ten Old Sacramento Dixieland Jazz Jubilees, Skonberg has recorded several albums, appeared at jazz festivals worldwide, and developed quite a following in New York and beyond.
Bria’s inventive arrangements of traditional jazz and her reworkings of popular songs in jazz settings give her performances a spirited feeling. She combines trumpet stylings that reflect a strong influence of Louis Armstrong with beautiful, highly original vocals.
Bria's latest album was recorded in New Orleans and she brought legendary drummer Herlin Riley from the “Big Easy" to the “Big Apple” for her recent sold-out appearances at Dizzy’s Club in Lincoln Center.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Interview highlights
On the demands of playing the trumpet
We love to complain about it and yet we all continue to do it because it's so rewarding. Growing up in Chilliwack, B.C., I didn't have a private teacher to set me up straight, so honestly listening and learning the music of Louis Armstrong with all his challenges, helped me get the instrument in my fingers. But I work on it every day.
I think that singing is the greatest thing you can do in whatever instrument you play. I will often play my warm ups and sing my warm ups at the same time going back and forth. And that enables me to get, you know, the air support under control. It's great for ear training, great for ultimately getting your ideas out on the instrument, whatever instrument you play.
On Performing at the Old Sacramento Dixieland Jazz Jubilee
Sacramento was such an impressionable time in my jazz journey. And those years I performed with Mighty Aphrodite with clarinetist Claire (then) McKenna from 2004-2010. Before that I came with the first Canadian youth band that ever performed there and that band was called the Fifty-first Eight. I was lucky to perform at the Sacramento Jubilee at least ten times.
On Recording in New Orleans
The last five years have been pretty disorienting since I put out my last album. I was trying to figure out a way forward and a way back at the same time and to get to the musical sensibilities — to get to the things that I’ve always loved, I thought “let’s revisit the music that I first fell in love with.”
I was talking to producer Matt Pierson and he said “why don’t we just go for it, go down to New Orleans itself.”
On being noticed by Wynton Marsalis
When I first moved to New York, I took a red eye from Seattle and crashed on a friend’s couch for a couple hours and then we went to play in Washington Square Park. Wynton was walking through the park and heard us playing a Jelly Roll Morton tune and gave me a thumbs up. I took it as an affirmation that I had made the right move and realized that would have never happened back in Chilliwack.
On raising a 4-year-old son
I became a mother in the fall of 2020, so my son's almost four years old and it changes everything. All the cliches are true. There's no time to worry about almost anything else. So, in some ways that is extremely liberating because when I'm in the practice room, I just do what I need to do. I've learned to be very efficient with the things that I need to get done.
But also, you know, it's just opened up a whole another emotional palette and I hear music in different ways, both through getting to introduce new ears to new sounds to songs that I've always loved or hearing songs that I've been familiar with, but didn't fully grasp the other layer of emotion within them.
