Greetings friends!

 

 

For those of you visiting for the first time, welcome!   I am a singer/songwriter, a novelist, and an artist/designer. 

 

I have composed music in both the jazz and alt-folk veins, which are featured on my CDs, all on Rue de la Harpe Records.  I also front, as one of its vocalist/performers, a 25-piece orchestra of the most strangely wild and innovative music you'll ever hear, guaranteed!  I am a published novelist, poet, and essayist. I dabble in abstract painting, portraitures, digital art, and folk crafts, purely as a hobby and for sake of soul.  I have designed CD and book covers for other performing artists, musicians, and writers.  I have made my actual living by singing in and around Los Angeles for the past two decades.  And it's all right here on this site, along with interviews, videos, photos, my performance portfolio, and much more, so happy browsing!

 

My influences include mystics, philosophers, healers, artists & innovators, original thinkers, pushers of envelopes, creators of movements, those unconcerned with zeitgeist, a little off, a tad quirky, unafraid to tap the unconscious well, willing for and honored by their own inner fool, nobody's darling as the poet Alice Walker says.
 

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Global Yoga and Other Healing Arts  (a personal passion of mine!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's the latest!

 

 

 

 

For anyone curious to hear about my GREAT KIDNEY ADVENTURE (and an adventure it was!), I am so incredibly honored to announce that The National Kidney Foundation's online magazine has just published two of my essays on the experience. I hope you'll take a moment to check them out. 

Standing Ajar: Notes from A Kidney Donor and Belligerent Romance: song. heart. bravery. 

(I donated a kidney to Hans San Juan on 7.22.08, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, and nearly 2 years later he is still healthy and not rejecting the new kidney.)

Please consider visiting The National Kidney Foundation at: www.kidney.org for information, inspiration, and donation. 
 

 

 

My most recently completed book manuscript is entitled The Ninth: A Theme and Variation on Grief, and is a memoir about the death of my mother, and the wake of grief that followed. I've laid self bare with this one, and have come up for air transformed. My mother was a charismatic figure in Los Angeles' political scene, as well as one of the first African-American woman CEOs...needless to say, a fascinating and larger-than-life human being.  And my book is both a tribute to her life, and an unexpected odyssey of self-excavation and self-revelation about who I was as a daughter, and who she was as a mother. 

I'm on the mission to find representation for the book.  And it is both a fun and hard-knocks process. 

Should a brush with serendipity actually be happening, and you happen to be a literary agent, publisher, or editor, or know someone who is, I invite you to read my book proposal. 

 

 

 

It's been a wonderful ride. Seven years, two CDs, the Playboy Jazz Festival, and your great support have all given The Slow Club Quartet many cherished memories. We said so long as a live performing group, with our final performance at the bar that had become our home, Jax Bar & Grill in Glendale, on March 9, 2010. The night turned out to be fantastic. The place was packed before the night was through, with old friendly faces and brand new ones. So that's the trick. Tell everyone it's your last show!  

 

The collaboration between myself and Craig Pilo, Ed Czach, and Don Kasper will always be remembered as a creative highpoint in my life, and they played their absolute best ever that night, which, when I tried to tell them that, was generally met with "We've got nuthin' to lose now!" never allowing me to take myself too seriously.  Glorious night! 
 

 

 

 

Once again The Orchestre Surréal slew the dragon.  We played the unbelievably fun Typhoon Restaurant, smack dab on the tarmac of the Santa Monica Airport on December 28, 2009.  We packed the place from wall to wall and ceiling to floor. And it was especially exciting for me, as it was also my Big-Ass Birthday Bash, as I have since dubbed it, and we blew the roof off.

 

There were friends in the audience who had traveled from far away to be there, friends I'd not seen in twenty years or more, surprise reunions, regular diehards who never miss an OS gig (I think Keith Emerson may be becoming one of those!), and a special spot in the show for a music legend (uh.....Keith....in case you didn't put that together...).  We debuted an arrangement written specifically for Mr. Emerson and the orchestra by Elvis Schoenberg (AKA Ross Wright) called Honky-Tonk 231. 

The orchestra outdid themselves kicking ass on brand new arrangements and nailing charts better than ever.  And the women in the orchestra were hotty-hot-hotter than ever before.  Ms. Marda Todd, violist extraordinaire, showed up in full-on black dominatrix latex, with a viola in one hand and a diamond-encrusted whip in the other (...just to give you some idea of how we roll!...).  Don't ask me how Dave Arana managed to play his keyboard dressed as a tree.  And I can honestly say I've never said that sentence before in my life.

The birthday cake served EIGHTY!  I have no idea how many candles there were, but let's just say fire marshals had to be standing by.  This was a terrifically magical evening.

Hooray for Elvis Schoenberg for such a strange and wonderful world he has created. Our brand new rendition of White Rabbit couldn't be more fitting, as he has definitely commandeered us all (orchestra members and audiences alike) down a magical rabbit hole for adventures untold.

 

 

Check out some fun footage from the Big Night!   (If you were there, you might be in this!)
 

 

 

 

 

 

And lastly!

The many personalities of Angela Carole Brown seem to be surfacing simultaneously these days, just trying their damnedest to ignite some kind of personal Renaissance, and if I am blessed and humbled I'll have the great opportunity to continue to share all of the various Angela's with you.

Look for more music, writing, art, and light bulbs in the coming year!

 

Many blessings, and happy navigating,
Angela

 

 

 

"Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: 

Give me leave to do my utmost."

– Isak Dineson