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Have you ever had a genuinely mystical phenomenon happen to you?

 

The very first song that Angela Carole Brown ever wrote, The Slow Club, which ultimately became the title cut of her acclaimed jazz CD, is about a nightclub in Paris. At the time she wrote it she'd never been to the city of lights. The story in the song is fiction. The club itself is fiction. And in the song she describes in great detail what the mood and look and walls and smell are like in this place. A few years after writing it and performing it around town, she was singing it at a club one night, and a French woman came up to her afterwards. This was the exchange:
 

"I enjoyed your song very much. It makes me think back with fond memory of my days at the Slow Club."
 

"I beg your pardon? Your days at the Slow Club? But this song is fiction."

 

"Oh, no. The Slow Club in Paris, France, oui?"

 

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but I think you may be thinking of someplace else. There isn't really a Slow Club. It's just a made-up place for a made-up song. I think I would know, since I wrote it. I just sort of have this fixation for that city, for some reason."

"And mademoiselle, I believe I would know. I'm the one who's been to this place you sing about. On the Rue du Rivoli, right down the way from the Louvre. I would say that is some pretty powerful fixation."

Angela's jaw was dropped for the next two years, as she sang this song around town, told this story, and relished in her, and her song's, spooky allure. Until she finally made it to Paris for the first time several years later, and looked up the Slow Club in her tourist guide book. And there it was, with a Rue du Rivoli address, as promised. The first chance she got, Angela went there and walked in, unprepared for an even newer set of phenomena. Every single detail she speaks of in the song was personified before her eyes, from the winding staircase that takes one down into it, to the smoky, blue ambience that invited secret rendezvous on the stairs.

She stood there and grinned from ear to ecstatic ear at the wonders of her life, and decided that she must've been that Slow Club chanteuse in another lifetime, simply recalling pockets of memory from a long-dormant nether-plane.

Thus began Angela's journey as a singer and songwriter, and carrying with her at all times the wonders that art simply begets.

Now to date, and recipient of the Heritage Magazine Award in poetry, Angela Carole Brown's unique use of the poetic to craft themes of elevated thought, combined with a keen harmonic sensibility, stands her enigmatic music out from the rest. 

 

A Los Angeles native, Angela 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; for South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker; and her own recordings, Resting on the Rock, The Slow Club, Music for the Weeping Woman, and Expressionism, all on Rue de la Harpe Records.  She has worked theatre, clubs, concert halls, television, and radio, in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. 

She is also a novelist, who has thus far brought us her debut novel, TRADING FOURS, on Infinity Publishing; about which she has been interviewed 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 John Stevenson. Angela is also a published poet and essayist, whose most recent pieces have been published by The National Kidney Foundation. 

Angela 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. 

Her singing career began by joining various bar bands; 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. 

In 1989, she signed a record contract with Tokyo's Teichiku Records, and released her debut CD, Angela, produced by David Garfield, which rose to #2 on Japan’s pop charts, leading her to be featured on Tokyo's NHK variety television show Music Dream Collection.  Angela remains her only release for Teichiku. 

In 1990, she began a stint at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills, with entertainment director Dana Bronson, that would turn out to extend for the next two decades.

In 1994, she authored, composed, and starred Off-Broadway in her critically lauded one-woman show, The Purple Sleep Café, at Primary Stages' 45th Street Theatre in New York City.

In 1995, she released her first CD of jazz standards, Standard Procedure, on Sand Canyon Records, with pianist Dana Bronson and bassist Jim DeJulio, her longtime collaborators from the Four Seasons. 

In 1996, she created the role of larger-than-life vixen The Fabulous Miss Thing (a cross between RuPaul and Norma Desmond) for the exquisitely radical Elvis Schoenberg's Orchestre Surreal a wild, genre-bending orchestral show that deconstructs classic rock songs with the wit of Spike Jones and the complexities of Frank Zappa, and featuring the wackiest wacky-savant orchestra of twenty-seven musicians in musical history!  Her involvement with the orchestra has included work as performer, contributing writer, and art director.

For seven years, Angela was "Miss Thing" to select Los Angeles audiences, through the release of two CDs, Air Surreal, and It's Alive!, for which she created the artwork that serve as their covers; a slot on Music Connection's Best Unsigned Acts List, and as L.A. Weekly's "Music Pick of the Week" in 2000. Her final performance with the orchestra was their John Anson Ford Amphitheatre debut, a show that ended up winning the L.A. Music Award for "Best Rock Opera of the Year." 

Angela recently rejoined The Orchestre Surreal, after a six-year hiatus, for the release of their newest CD, Manic Voodoo Lady - a Tribute to the music of Hendrix, which she also designed.

In 2002, Angela launched two original music projects, whose mission was to feature her songwriting and to create live performance experiences. The Global Folk, a guitar-led trio, has showcased Angela's alt-folk songs, and The Slow Club Quartet, a piano-led trio, has showcased her jazz compositions.  These two groups have performed all over Los Angeles, including at the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life Festival and the legendary Playboy Jazz Festival.  Her music is the recipient of the Just Plain Folks Award, and a nominee for the Hollywood Music and Media Award.

Angela's personal creative mentors, throughout her life, and to whom she owes a profound debt of gratitude, include: Carl A. Johnson, Karl Karrish, Marilyn Allen, John Allen, Tony Carbone, Christopher Lofton, Rino Mascarino, Margo Gravelle, and Lotus Weinstock. 

Angela's newest creative foray has been graphic design, with a specialty in CD and book covers. She has, so far, designed over thirty projects for other performing artists, musicians, and writers. 

Angela has had the honor to perform with/for David Foster, Keb Mo, Mindi Abair, Ricky Martin, Trey Parker & Matt Stone, Keith Emerson (of Emerson, Lake & Palmer), Heatwave, Rita Coolidge, Danny Seraphine, Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr., Billy Childs, Linda Hopkins, Freda Payne, Trini Lopez, Roy Clark, Al Wilson, Linda Taylor of Threshold and Whose Line Is It, Anyway? and Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul, & Mary). 

She is a member of the internationally acclaimed author, lecturer, and spiritual activist Marianne Williamson's Miracle Ensemble, and most recently has had her music featured on the internet series Venice. 

Today, however, Angela speaks to us most uniquely through her original music projects, and as a woman of letters.