Bria Skonberg

Bria Skonberg is a Canadian jazz trumpeter, vocalist and composer based in New York City. Born in 1983 in Chilliwack, British Columbia, she took a degree in jazz trumpet performance at Capilano University in Vancouver, graduating in 2006, and studied with Warren Vaché Jr. She moved to New York in 2010 and has worked since at the meeting point of early jazz and contemporary writing, leading groups including Bria's Hot Five and the Big Bang Jazz Band and playing alongside Dal Richards, Bucky Pizzarelli, Howard Alden and Wycliffe Gordon. Her albums are Fresh (2009), So Is the Day (2012), Into Your Own (2014), Bria (Sony Masterworks, 2016), With a Twist (2017), Nothing Never Happens (2019), What It Means (Cellar Music Group, 2024) and, in 2026, the paired releases Brass and Indigo. Bria reached number five on the Billboard jazz chart and won the 2017 Juno Award for Vocal Jazz Album of the Year; What It Means, recorded in New Orleans, drew a rare five-star DownBeat review. Brass, released in March 2026, is trumpet-focused, with Luther Allison on piano and organ, Eric Wheeler on bass, Darrian Douglas on drums and Kellin Hanas on second trumpet; Indigo, released 3 July 2026, is its voice-led companion, co-produced with Matt Pierson and arranged by Gil Goldstein for a small string and woodwind ensemble, closing with her original "So It Sets", co-written with Ann Hampton Callaway. She is a three-time Juno nominee and a ten-time DownBeat Rising Star poll winner, and has played Newport, Monterey, the Montreal International Jazz Festival and Carnegie Hall. She co-founded the New York Hot Jazz Festival, co-produces the NY Hot Jazz Camp, and teaches through Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Louis Armstrong House Museum.

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