Trumpeter Bria Skonberg and compatible sidemen show "What It Means" at Jazz Kitchen

Bria Skonberg leads the charge on trumpet Wednesday. 

The direction she's traveling in musically with her current recording picks up on Bria Skonberg's link to Louis Armstrong, her first trumpet idol as a budding musician in far-off Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada. Now she's established on the New York jazz scene and building devotedly on the legacy of Armstrong's hometown. 

Heading a quintet at the Jazz Kitchen scheduled as an appetizer for the Indy Jazz Fest, which officially kicks off Saturday, the trumpeter-vocalist lost little time in performing "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans." For the second set, she sang and played the song, third on the set list,  as if there was no doubt that she knows. And indeed, that current CD is titled "What It Means."

I trust her as a true believer in her inspiration from Satchmo: She pronounces his first name as he did, sounding the "s." (Remember his late-in-life hit, where he begins: "Hello, Dolly, this is Louis-ss, Dolly"? Sure, you do; everyone does.)

Her trumpet playing is flowing and logical, but also zestfully punctuated with short phrases. She does not try to ape Armstrong's style, with that ringing vibrato on held notes, with the highest pitches always nailing the climax of a solo or ensemble passage.  She is modern in her variety of articulation, but reins in the "modernism" so that any piece not devoted to the Armstrong legacy does not constitute a huge departure from it. 

Her muted playing on some tunes lent a timbral variety of the sort rarely heard from her idol. His golden open-horn tone has gone down as well-nigh inimitable anyway. I once knew a knowledgeable jazz fan who maintained you could hear just one recorded note from Pops and know who it was. Skonberg wisely applies her own signature over the model created indelibly by Armstrong. 

It was also clear on Wednesday night that she gets all the additional fire she needs from her sidemen.  Especially vivid in this regard was her pianist, Mathis Picard. whose solo on "Do You Know What  It Means" was the first of several that dug in with both hands. A worthy successor was the heavy swing he imparted to a Skonberg original, "In the House." That inspired a trenchant, roiling tenor solo from her reedman, Julian Lee, who also played bass clarinet and soprano sax during the set. 

Filled out by bassist Mark Lewandowski and drummer Darrian Douglas, the quintet displayed easy precision in rapport. Skonberg's arrangement of "Cornet Chop Suey," one of the favorites from Armstrong's Hot Five recordings of the 1920s, featured a well-controlled, stage-whisper noodling episode near the end that set up a crescendo leading to a final ensemble outburst. Her version of Ellington's "Mood Indigo" was a winner too, with her most expansive vocal of the set. She soared over the lyrics' cresting melancholy, and Lee nailed the interpretation by giving his contributions the hazy intensity of a Ben Webster solo.

Some of us might have wished she'd sung "Comes Love," which boasts clever lyrics outlining various minor problems that can be successfully solved, love always being the exception. She chose instead to  keep that set finale instrumental, treating the tune to a fast Latin rendering. It helped build upon the excitement of "The Beat Goes On," which she did sing, and which the band treated to an infectious hard-bop groove. 

[Photo by Rob Ambrose]