Bria Skonberg
Birdland
Through December 3

Every time Bria Skonberg mentions that she hails from Chilliwack, British Columbia — as she does during virtually every show — people applaud. This leads me to think that there must be quite a few Chilliwackos in the house. Still, the beats that she prefers are much more New Orleans than Great White North, and lately she’s been leaning heavily into the basic Crescent City street parade beat to tie together her shows.  

The trumpeter and singer started her first set of a four-night/seven-show run by parading onto the stage of the Birdland theater with an original called “Elbow Bump,” in a swinging march tempo. About halfway through, she paid homage to the greatest trumpeter and singer of them all, the mighty Louis Armstrong, with one of his most revered creations, the 1926 “Cornet Chop Suey” — but delivered with a beat that was more gumbo than Chinese food. Then, a few tunes later, she moved into the jazz standard “I’ll Remember April,” again with a beat more Mardi Gras and Fat Tuesday than springtime. 

In her opening patter, she informed us that it’s been four years since she’s led a band in a New York club. This was not only because of the pandemic, but because in the middle of the lockdown, she had a baby — talk about great timing — who’s now two years old. She celebrated that fact with a highly precocious mashup in which she coos sweetly on John Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy” and then effortlessly glides into the Neal Hefti-Count Basie classic “Li’l Darlin’.”  

There’s no one quite like Ms. Skonberg; she is a trumpeter of force and power, in the same class as such latter-day Armstrongs as Ruby Braff and her own mentor, Warren Vache Jr. Conversely, as a vocalist, she’s a confirmed minimalist, in the manner of Julie London and Peggy Lee.  Once in a while she’ll surprise us with a super-high head tone — as she did at the end of “Mood Indigo.” This adds dramatic force to the performance, and isn’t there merely to prove that she can do it.

As a trumpeter with a rhythm section — pianist Chris Pattishall, bassist Grayson Brockamp, and drummer Darrian Douglas — she comes out of a unique jazz tradition. Most often, brassmen will bring along a reed instrument as a second horn, as Armstrong and Miles Davis almost invariably did, to name just two. Working in front of a trio by herself, she varies her sound with a variety of mutes, plunger mutes, metal harmon mutes, and sometimes waving her own manicured hand in front of the bell to produce another unique effect. She uses the cup mute near the end on a slow and sultry “Comes Love,” which switches tempos halfway through — by now I was expecting another detour into a NOLA street parade, but instead, she took us to Havana, and the whole enchilada suddenly shifted gears into a clave beat. 

That was one of many surprises: She also treated us to “Trust In Me,” by the Sherman Brothers from “Jungle Book,” which she crooned seductively, as well as her extended, strictly vocal treatment of “Mood Indigo.” Then there were more originals, including a sweet love song titled “Have a Little Heart” and an aggressive, decidedly postmodern instrumental, “Villain Vanguard” — this took us to the realm of Freddie Hubbard or Woody Shaw, especially in that the tune boasts a completely freeform section in the middle.

She winds up with a big finish: the Ray Charles R&B classic “Night Time Is the Right Time,” which allows for some highly exuberant trumpeting and singing as well as call and response with the crowd.  This is what Variety, back in the day, would describe as “socko showmanship.” There’s nothing like a little audience participation to liven up a show, even if it hardly needs enlivening.