Last Notes of the Season

PREVIEW – Bria Skonberg Quintet Friday at A Place for Jazz 

You can hear Bria Skonberg’s love for Louis Armstrong about two notes into her first solo; her mastery of the great maestro’s sound and style rings that clear.

The Canadian-born trumpeter and singer brings her Quintet to A Place for Jazz Friday, final show of the season. In this latest in a decade-deep string of area shows, Skonberg will likely express more clearly than ever her love for Armstrong’s fill-the-horn-and-heart gusto, his micro-precise hesitation phrasing that’s the very essence of swing. 

Bria Skonberg at Skidmore’s Zankel Music Center. Michael Hochanadel photos

Skonberg’s post-COVID new album “What It Means” features top New Orleans players including drummer Herlin Riley, banjoist Don Vappie and sousaphone player Ben Jaffe. Jaffe leads the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, which his parents founded in 1961. The band plays March 8 at The Egg. “I’ve seen the band many times, and have been lucky enough to sit in,” Skonberg says on her website, noting this powerful credential of acceptance by New Orleans masters.

Just as Skonberg explores more modern trumpet approaches that have evolved since Armstrong mapped the future for jazz soloists, she reaches past New Orleans antique tunes onstage and on record. “What It Means” presents both vintage numbers and John Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy” – she’s a parent now, herself – and Van Morrison’s “Days Like This.”

Skonberg’s previous area shows include A Place for Jazz in 2014, at that time presented in the Unitarian Universalist Society “Whisperdome;” Skidmore’s Zankel Music Center and the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. Her previous A Place for Jazz show brought a thrilling, generous moment: Charmed by the middle school students playing offstage in the Society’s dining room during intermission, she invited them to join her band on the main stage.

Her new album expresses both her warm kinetic reverence for Satchmo-soul swing and swagger and her joy at emerging from COVID’s isolation. That’s what “What It Means” means. Her title is the core of that essential Crescent City anthem “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans” and she’s dedicated to taking us there. The album features her regular touring pianist Chris Pattishall plus bassist Mark Lewandowski, drummer Darrell Smith and reeds player Julian Lee.

The Bria Skonberg Quintet plays A Place for Jazz Friday, Nov. 1. 7:30 p.m. in the Carl B. Taylor Auditorium of the SUNY Schenectady Community College School of Music. $25 at the door. http://www.aplaceforjazz.org.