Bria Skonberg - LYDIALIEBMAN.COM

Indigo
Release Date: July 3, 2026
Label: Cellar Music Group

Juno Award-winning artist Bria Skonberg shares the breadth of her vocal expression with the release of Indigo. The anticipated partner to Brass, her 2026 trumpet-centered meditation, Indigo is a celebration of song, singing, and orchestrating for all the colors of her vocal artistry. Co-produced by Skonberg and her longtime collaborator Matt Pierson, these albums excavate both wholes of her creative identity. “After decades of figuring out where the trumpet and the voice come together,” she says, “I thought it would be interesting and challenging to explore them both, and that was it.” Asked frequently whether she’s a singer who plays trumpet or a trumpet player who sings, in recording Indigo and Brass, Skonberg realized she’s partly neither, and both entirely — a revelation to the artist whom The New York Times calls “the shining hope of hot jazz.”

“I had to work on them both, individually,” says Skonberg. “It’s always good to come back and sharpen the saw.” Indigo features the foundation of her Brass quartet, Eric Wheeler on bass and Darrian Douglas on drums, plus orchestration from her 2017 With a Twist collaborator, multi-Grammy Award winner Gil Goldstein, who also serves as the album’s pianist, complementing Skonberg’s intimate vocal — and its emotional resonances — with subtleties of tone and color. “What I love about Gil is he has such a huge imagination,” she says. “There was never any doubt he would be the person to arrange the album.”

The artists assemble a small but mighty orchestra, including Antoine Silverman and Entcho Todorov on violin, Yuko Naito-Gotay on viola, and Emily Brausa on cello, adding a distinct textural warmth from Kathleen Nester on alto flute and Charles Pillow on bass clarinet. “Gil and I settled on some really amazing sound combinations,” says Skonberg, “but once you pull together cello, alto flute, bass clarinet and where my voice sits, it’s just gorgeous.”

Where Brass captures Skonberg’s range as a technician and a style master, Indigo presents a level of vulnerability Skonberg is able to access vocally because she’s lived through the complexities and absurdities of life. “Indigo is an exploration in nuances: conversations, chemistry, fragility, and sense of self,” she says. “Many of these songs require a certain amount of life experience to be able to understand and interpret them, and at this point I feel like I’ve lived them all.”

Engineered, mixed and mastered by Christopher Allen, Indigo opens on Michel Legrand’s “Watch What Happens.” Adding a pedal to a partido alto feel, Skonberg bonds sophisticated with steadfast while Douglas’ brushwork creates a buoyancy around the hushed intensity of her vocal. “This song is my current love letter to humanity,” says Skonberg. “I’m hoping that we will see into each other’s hearts and make authentic connections.”

In back-to-back homage, “I’m Glad There is You” and “Mood Indigo” pay tribute to Sarah Vaughan & Clifford Brown and Miles Davis, respectively. The former transmits a plush, symphonic verse before Skonberg brings the tune into time, spotlighting a mastery over her vocal range: “It’s a beast, vocally, but it’s just a song about gratitude and being grateful for the people we love whether or not they’re with us.” The latter enters the iconic groove from “All Blues,” maintaining that reverence across the tune, including through Skonberg’s muted trumpet. “I like to put little Easter eggs in my albums,” says Skonberg, “for myself and the other jazz listeners.”

One of two songs appearing on both Brass and Indigo, “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” serves as something of a metaphor for the dual-album project. “It’s the feeling I have when I’m asked if I’m a singer who plays trumpet or a trumpet player who sings,” says Skonberg. “It sums it up: you’re stuck between two equally difficult decisions [laughs]. Also, the trumpet is the fiery part and the vocal is more the deep blue sea.” Alongside her nimble vocal, she delivers a swinging trumpet solo before joining Goldstein for a drum interlude that spotlights Douglas’ relaxed spontaneity.

Featuring Goldstein’s accordion and a beautiful solo gesture from Brausa, “If You Go Away” signals an emotional shift on Indigo. Through a lyrical whisper at once conversational and resonant, Skonberg sings directly into the listener’s ear. “It’s a little bit of a manouche French vibe,” she says. Originally recorded in French by the legendary singer Jacques Brel, the song has “just two parts, but it’s such a moment. There’s hope and despair — the fragility, the vulnerability — but there’s also strength in that, too.”

Indigo continues with a gripping arrangement of Sting’s “Fragile,” showcasing Skonberg’s muted trumpet. “Welcome to my party,” she says. “There’s always something old, there’s always something new, and then there’s always something in the middle that’s been kind of manipulated.” Her original song “So It Goes” emerged as an instrumental, which appears on Brass. Written in the style of a standard from the American Songbook, which Skonberg admits is “deceptively hard” to do, she soon realized the tune wasn’t finished. “I thought, ‘There’s a lyric here.” So she called her friend, the cabaret legend Ann Hampton Callaway to help her articulate the story. “It’s a love story that fell apart and then got put back together and then fell apart again [laughs].”

One of the record’s more complicated stories, “Tell Him I Said Hello” presents music & lyrics primed for Goldstein’s sensitive orchestration and Skonberg’s interpretive subtleties. “It’s a conversation with a friend who may or may not take what you’re saying to the person that you were in love with,” she says. “It’s so specific. And I’m realizing that great songwriting is taking a specific moment and making it universal. Gil wrote a beautiful arrangement that embodies the melancholy of lingering hope turning into reluctant acceptance.”

Indigo ends on a note of undying optimism, a hallmark of Skonberg’s expression as an artist and as a person navigating a troubled world. “We’ll Be Together Again” features cat-paw clarinet lines and blossoming orchestration. Skonberg approaches the song’s interval leaps with both technical poise and wonderment. But the meaning behind the tune informs her treatment of its components. “The sentiment of togetherness is important to me,” she says. “The way the album’s book-ended, ‘Watch What Happens’ is like, ’Let someone speak to your heart, stay open,’ and then the end thought is, ‘Remain in this space together.’”

Across Brass and Indigo, Skonberg’s message is clear: “I try to bring people together as much as possible. If I can get people having a shared experience, in live concerts, whatever their opinions or views are, to me that’s meaningful.”