Music
I escaped my parents’ hotel room somewhere after midnight and got myself to the Village. A New York virgin. Poking my head into several jazz clubs, all percolating in a way unfamiliar to this smalltown girl, where midnights were somnolent at best, I picked one that I figured was my best shot at sitting in. The piano player never even asked my key. Or my age. After singing “Misty,” enveloped in cigarette smoke and blue velvet allure, a fantasia my girlfriends didn’t share, I hastened back to Central Park, beyond reeling, in a taxi that cloistered all my possibilities inside.
Angela's debut album as a songwriter, this all-original recording takes its inspiration from the folk vocabulary of different cultures, as well as America's roots and blues movement, all with the moral obligation to collide. Featuring her alt-folk group The Global Folk (w/ Ken Rosser, Ross Wright & Paul Angers). With special guests, Lynn "Skins" Coulter, Lonnie Johnson, Glenn Carlos, Kellum Lewis & Michael Kramer.
Though Angela's second released album as a songwriter, The Slow Club is actually comprised of the very first songs she ever wrote. The jazz ensemble that eventually became known as The Slow Club Quartet (w/ Ed Czach, Jonathan Pintoff & Craig Pilo) debuted as a group with this all-original recording that takes a buoyant, playful, and poetic approach to the genre. With special guests, Billy Childs, Bob Sheppard, Richard Martinez & Michael Holmes.
This intimate guitar/vocal duo album features a scaled-down version of The Global Folk, with multi-instrumentalist Ken Rosser. And he and Angela have created a nice pas de deux of moody, textural, original folk songs inspired by Picasso's enigmatic series "The Weeping Women." With special guests, Prince Diabate & Sarah O'Brien.
The jazz ensemble The Slow Club Quartet's second recording (but first under its own band name) is a canon of songs collected from their favorite musical artists. Jimi Hendrix, Tom Waits, the Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell, and Elliot Smith, to name a few, have been given the ensemble's own expressionistic stamp.
Not only is this collection of pop & jazz cover songs suited to a cozy rainy day, it was recorded on one of the rainiest days the year saw. If you listen closely enough, you might even hear some of the storm outside.
This curation of recordings features songs that were never included on any formal album, and spans the stretch of Angela's singing career, exhibiting wildly different genres that reflect her own ever-shifting arc as an artist. Therefore, they remain her precious, oddball orphans.
Conceived and composed by guitarist/songwriter Linda Taylor of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" Sum Blues is the sole album from Linda's band Threshold, with Angela as lead vocalist. This hard-hitting effort is politically charged, and draws heavily from the blues, soul, gospel, funk, and R&B of decades past.
This recording of jazz standards (produced by the late Phil Settle) remains the only recording that the iconic Four Seasons Trio ever made, in 20-something years' reign at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills Lounge. The whimsical pen-&-ink artwork was commissioned to Ojai artist René Norman.
Decidedly unconventional, Angela's holiday album is an eclectic mix of traditional favorites & introspective new takes, betraying a reverent nod to a rustic, Waits-ian world, with just a pinch of the Celtic, designed for an intimate, listening setting.
And Angela's very first album ever, for Tokyo's Teichiku Records. It was 1989, the embarkation of her recording career. With the top session players of the day — David Garfield, Jimmy Johnson, John Peña, the late Carlos Vega, Luis Conte, Lenny Castro, Brandon Fields, to name a few — it was an experience Angela has never forgotten.
For something in the area of wellness: Relax. Restore. Renew. After 30 years as a professional musician, and 20 as a yoga practitioner, with this guided class Angela finally integrated two of her loves and produced this yoga CD. It is one hour of gentle instruction, narrated by Angela, and featuring beautifully improvised music by The Global Folk.
Continuing with the wellness path, this collection of short guided meditations is designed to easily facilitate beginning or ending your busy day with intention and consciousness-tuning. Each meditation was written and narrated by Angela, and speaks to different spiritual tenets: gratitude, compassion, forgiveness, mindfulness, goodwill, and being present. May these meditations bring some peace to your day.
And finally, Angela's nearly 3-decade involvement with Elvis Schoenberg's Orchestre Surreal, a 30-piece orchestra. This debut recording, Air Surreal, sets the tone for a whimsical collision of musical genres. It combines rock & roll classics with the classical masters, as well as a Pandora's box of world and ethnic music, opera, jazz improvisation, and underscored spoken monologues, for a thoroughly theatrical listening. Imagine a collaboration between Jimi Hendrix and Strauss, Jim Morrison and Debussy. This melting pot of musical sounds creates an exhilarating experience that captures the imagination and interest of only the most hilariously disturbed. Conducted by Elvis Schoenberg, and featuring the vocals of Angela's Orchestre Surreal alter-ego ... The Fabulous Miss Thing.
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(Angela is also the illustrator and designer of all three Orchestre Surreal album covers.)
The second outing with The Orchestre Surreal is even more of an unholy marriage of genres, this time with a decidedly B-flick horror movie thematic to tempt one along. Who wouldn't love a German, dodecaphonic rendition of Blue Suede Shoes ? Conducted once again by the mad baton of Elvis Schoenberg, featuring the loopy, death-defying vocals of The Fabulous Miss Thing, and this time introducing MMA-fighter-turned-opera-singer, Dangerous Dan O'Callaghan, It's Alive! mesmerizes with monstrous renditions of everything from the Beatles to Puccini.
And the third in The Orchestre Surreal's recording canon is Manic Voodoo Lady, a thoroughly unique yet reverent tribute to the music of Jimi Hendrix. Elvis has created an alter-universe where classics such as "Fire" are transformed into a Stravinsky-esque ballet suite, "Little Wing" becomes a visual dance of a Chinese Courtesan, and "Voodoo Child" is the lair of a witch doctor with African Rhythms, aggressive Bartök-esque strings and a choir of haunting voodoo chants. Elvis Schoenberg's arrangements are as iconic as the songs themselves. Featuring some of L.A.'s finest guitarists (in honor of the master Hendrix): Scott Henderson, Jeff Miley, Jimmy Mahlis, Kurt James, and long-time Orchestre Surrealist Ken Rosser; as well as vocalists The Fabulous Miss Thing, The Daunting Diva Lynn, Nick Hernandez, and Headless Jason Paige.