Updated: December 3, 2024
Born: December 27
JazzTimes Magazine writes that Canadian jazz vocalist Angela Verbrugge "possesses a winsome, brightly-burnished, pliable voice, with ample emotional intelligence, considerable song-writing skills, and conspicuously good taste.” Angela recorded her debut album featuring a New York City-based piano trio, and released it through Gut String Records in 2019. Toronto Music Report described, “Verbrugge addresses each song with the breathtakingly, absolutely natural and unaffected purity of her voice… her material sounds magical.”
The album debuted at number one in jazz on iTunes-Canada. CBC Canadian National Radio host Laila Biali remarked, "There's so much joy in delivery.” Wall Street Journal-writer and acclaimed author Will Friedwald writes in his liner notes that Verbrugge possesses, "a vocal sound that's full of depth and nuance - welcoming the light without denying the existence of the darkness” and that she works with a “top-drawer arranging crew and cast of expert musicians”.
Angela was one of the youngest theatre-program graduates from Toronto’s George Brown School of Performing Arts after a youth spent active on the arts scene of her birth city, Kingston, Ontario. Growing up, she studied classical piano, played trombone in high school band competitions and acted in many productions. She relocated to Vancouver in 1997 and to Victoria in 2019. After having three kids (now teens) and three brushes with death (drowning, car accident and cancer), she followed her passion to jazz by curating her own musical education through mentorship and private lessons with world-class musicians in Vancouver, New York and Los Angeles.
Angela is primarily inspired to perform jazz standards, songs from the swing era, bebop, and contemporary material within those genres. As a lyricist, her work has received critical acclaim. “She is a witty songwriter, drawing on Cole Porter, Gilbert and Sullivan, and Johnny Mercer for inspiration and rapid-fire rhymes, occasionally resembling a less vinegary Dave Frishberg.” (JazzLives)
She has appeared at the Vancouver International Film Festival, and at many North American jazz clubs and venues. Her trios have included such acclaimed musicians as Ray Gallon, Cameron Brown, Anthony Pinciotti, Neil Swainson, Miles Black, Cory Weeds, Paul Rushka, Julian MacDonough, Joe Poole, Bernie Senensky and Terry Clarke. Angela’s recordings have received critical acclaim from radio/podcast hosts across the globe, receiving airplay on CBC Saturday Night Jazz, Hot Air, NPR, popular jazz programs the U.S., South America, Europe and Asia, charting on both Earshot and JazzWeek. Her originals have received coveted premiere features on JAZZIZ, JazzWeekly and JazzTimes.
George Harris at Jazz Weekly sums it up, describing, "fun and quirky, hip and a hoot, wispy and romantic; she slithers and oozes, and cleverly swings...
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Angela Verbrugge: Somewhere
by Katchie Cartwright
Based in Victoria, jny: British Columbia, Angela Verbrugge keeps a busy schedule as a singer, touring in Canada and farther afield. In addition to performing, she writes songs--jazz songs, new standards--with lyrics that are engagingly personal and funny, containing the occasional acerbic twist. As a lyricist, she often speaks to the quotidian. Her texts are a perfect match for pianist Ray Gallon's boppish compositions. On Enough's Enough" (Love for Connoisseurs, Gut String Records, 2022), she takes a sloppy lover to ...
Continue ReadingAngela Verbrugge: Somewhere
by Michael Steinman
The proper response to Beauty is an awed admiring silence. So these liner notes should be one word in a large font: LISTEN. But Angela asked me to add a few hundred keystrokes to the project, so here we are. Incidentally, I have chosen to focus on Angela in the midst of the most superb musicians and arrangements. I hope they will forgive me! Angela Verbrugge is a great subversive. Her work is so quietly insinuating that listeners ...
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Jazz Vocalist Angela Verbrugge Set To Entertain With Quirky Repertoire At Pizza Express Live On June 3 And 4
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Angela Verbrugge
Pizza Express Live Soho Presents A Canadian Jazz Vocalist And Lyricist Inspired By Cole Porter: Angela Verbrugge With Nyc Bebop Jazz Pianist Ray Gallon Saturday and Sunday, June 3 and 4. Pizza Express Soho in jny: London / 10 Dean Street London / 8PM Tickets available—£25 at pizzaexpresslive.com Victoria, BC based, Angela Verbrugge , returns to London’s award-winning jazz club, Pizza Express Live, on June 3 and 4 for a back-to-back engagement accompanied by acclaimed New York City jazz pianist ...
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Interview: Angela Verbrugge
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Canadian singer Angela Verbrugge recently released her second studio album, Love for Connoisseurs (Gut String). I loved one of her video clips, read how hard she's been working and decided to interview her by email. Her new album is so beautiful and original. All 12 songs feature her lyrics to new or existing jazz compositions by modern-day composers. Her vision is to create a new vocal jazz repertoire by collaborating with composers who write innovative, catchy melodies in the style ...
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"Quirky with a swing! Angela Verbrugge gives singers like Lorraine Feather a run for their money with her witty lyrics on her originals that area mixed with some clever covers. In the Archie Comics of life, this lady is a bubbly Betty." George Harris, Jazz Weekly
"A perfect album: she makes all of her chosen material sound magical. A gem of a vocalist. beautifully crafted arrangements in beguiling variety and sensuousness. Miss Verbrugge addresses each with the breathtakingly, absolutely natural and unaffected purity of her voice, heard in every lovingly caressed phrase. This is a stunning debut album for Angela Verbrugge. Simply stunning! How could it not be when Miss Verbrugge ignites The Night We Couldn’t Say Good Night by blasting off into the appropriately rarefied atmosphere of Bebop with her proverbial nod to the great Eddie Jefferson and Jon Hendricks? “I’m Running Late”, Miss Verbrugge’s own composition (with pianist Ray Gallon), is an effervescent and racy opening song." - Raul da Gama, Toronto Music Report
Primary Instrument
Vocals
Location
Victoria
Willing to teach
Beginner to advanced