About Barbara Brussell
Award winning cabaret singer Barbara Brussell has been aptly described by the New York critic Roy Sander of Backstage: "Once in a blue moon an artist comes along whose talent is so striking that nothing less than shouting it from the rooftop will do." The fourth-generation Californian was born in Los Angeles, raised in Carmel and bitten by the showbiz bug at the age of three. Brussell earned a bachelor of fin Arts degree in music form the Academy of Music, on the Monterey Peninsula, California, studied at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater and began her career starring in many plays and musicals, regionally and on tour. She premiered her cabaret act at the famed Gardenia in Los Angeles (where she was a much lauded "fixture" for more than a decade), going on to delight and astound cabaret and concert audiences in San Francisco(The Plush Room), Herbst Theater, Fairmont Hotel's Venetian Room), New York (Eighty Eight's, Algonquin's Oak Room, Town Hall), Chicago (Toulouse on the Park). Florida, Minnesota, Nebraska, and of course, Los Angeles (Gardenia, Cinegrill, UCLA's Freud Hall, Alex Theater).
Barbara's work is characterized by her capacity to go wherever the truth of a lyric should lead her, whether it is heartbreaking vulnerability, explosively mixing love, passion and anger, or hilarious lunacy. It is virtually impossible to separate singer from song in a Brussell performance: she is clearly the vessel through which the songwriter's work sounds... unencumbered by self-censorship or lack of imagination. As cabaret legend Julie Wilson has said, "Barbara will take you with her wherever she goes...she leaves her stamp and images in your head. She's totally unique!"
