A N G E L A C A R O L E B R O W N
music. video. photo gallery. resume. bio. press reviews. articles and interviews.
626.824.2784
|
|
|
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
M U S I C
S A M P L E
S
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
L I V E
P E R F O R
M A N C E
C L I P S
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
B I O G R A
P H Y
Los Angeles native Angela Carole Brown has been a veteran of the L.A. music scene for over two decades as a vocalist and recording artist. She has recorded voice-overs, movie cues, jingles, and CDs for herself and other artists, including: Josh Groban's hit single You Raise Me Up on his Closer CD for Warner Bros. Records, and for South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker. She has worked theatre, clubs, concert halls, television, and radio, in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, including the lead in L.A. Music Award’s “2004 Best Rock Opera of the Year” Symphony of the Absurd with the Orchestre Surreal at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre in Los Angeles, and her critically lauded Off-Broadway, one-woman show, The Purple Sleep Café, at Primary Stages' 45th Street Theatre in New York City.
Brown is also a writer, whose debut novel, TRADING FOURS, about the Los Angeles music scene, was published by Infinity Books and has been called "a Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for musicians." TRADING FOURS has been featured on KPFK's Arts in Review and KUCI's Blacklisted; given honorable mention in Music Connection Magazine; and featured in an Ejazznews.com article entitled Jazz Encounters of the Literary Kind, by the UK columnist John Stevenson.
Her most recent essays have been published by The National Kidney Foundation.
Brown began her career, however, as an actress, after graduating from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and landing work with various Los Angeles theatre companies, performing the repertoires of Shakespeare, Williams, Brecht, Shaw, and Puccini, to name a few, the experience of which has had significant bearing on her approach to a song. The high notes will mostly be elusive to this slightly raspy alto, but her gift is in her ability to use that texture to interpret a lyric with genuine intimacy, and connect to a song the way an actor connects to a character he is hired to play. Jason McCloskey, in the BACK STAGE WEST, has said of her: "As Angela Carole Brown begins to sing, she underscores the fact that while most singers simply sing songs, great singers employ their voices as instruments and their songs as vehicles to create tone poems of undeniable emotional impact."
Brown eventually migrated from acting to singing by joining various bar bands, doing the cabaret and hotel circuit, and establishing what would turn out to be years-long alliances with wonderful musicians, and with recording work; and in 1984 won the grand prize in the first-ever (to become annual) Stardom Pursuit singing contest sponsored by the old legendary Rose Tattoo Cabaret in Los Angeles.
She never did "the road," but has established a solid base and reputation as an L.A. vocalist of stylistic diversity, integrity and professionalism.
Brown launched two original music projects in the early 2000s, whose mission was to feature her songwriting and to create live performance experiences. The Global Folk, a guitar-led trio, showcased Angela's alt-folk songs, and The Slow Club Quartet, a piano-led trio, showcased her jazz compositions. These two groups have performed all over Los Angeles, including the Playboy Jazz Festival, and have resulted in the recordings Resting on the Rock, The Slow Club, Music for the Weeping Woman, and Expressionism, all on Rue de la Harpe Records.
Brown is presently one of the lead singers (since 1997) of the award-winning and exquisitely radical Elvis Schoenberg's Orchestre Surreal, as "The Fabulous Miss Thing," re-enlivening her old theatre background in a larger-than-life role. She is also a member of the internationally acclaimed author, lecturer, and spiritual activist Marianne Williamson's Miracle Ensemble, and most recently has had her original music featured on the internet series Venice.
Her proudest achievement, however, is as a kidney donor, which she did in 2008 for a young man who now has a new lease on life.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
P H O T O S
