Cobby Brzeski: A Three-Headed Threat

Cobby Brzeski. Photo by Rachel Rodgers.

Most young musicians look for their niche—their musical family where they best fit in and can best showcase their talent. Then there’s Cobby Brzeski: big band swing singer, jazz flautist, and folk-rock singer-songwriter.

When asked if her three-front offensive on the music business might not confuse her fans, she was confident in her chosen approach. “I can see how it has been a little bit confusing for people who don’t know everything I do. But for the most part, I think people know I do [all three].

“The way I like to describe myself is a multi-genre artist. I love being a multi-genre artist because each genre serves as a different outlet of expression. It’s hard to stick to one thing when there are so many uniquely different and fun expressions of music to love!

“My two main projects are my 1940s swing band and my pop singer-songwriter project, the Florida Sunshine Band.

“For a little while, people saw me as more of a jazz artist.”

Cobby (her professional stage name) attributes that impression to the fact that her 2022 debut, Vintage Girl in a Modern World, was a swing/jazz outing. She said that 80 percent of what she writes is in a pop/rock vein and only 20 percent is jazz.

“Ironically, I put out the jazz album! The vision for that one came first. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do with the Florida Sunshine Band. For the longest time it was just me, my guitar, and my flute.”

But her second album will be with the Florida Sunshine Band, which she named as a tribute to her birthplace and childhood home in Naples, Florida.

“It’s all original songs that I’ve written over the span of the last 15 years. It has quite a wide range of styles. I have a couple folk tunes and a couple pop tunes, a reggae tune or two.

“I wrote my first song at 13—nobody’s heard it but me! But I remember one of the first good songs I wrote was in high school, I was 15 or 16, and it’s actually going to be on my upcoming album in honor of my teenage self who started this whole journey in music.

“We started recording the album in January, finished in April, and are now in the mixing phase.”

Cobby said she’s releasing the album independently this fall.

Pre-San Diego
Cobby was born in Naples, Florida 29 years ago.

“My mom took piano lessons when she was young. And my dad did musical theater when he was young. My mom is an artist as well—she’s a painter. Music and the arts were always very much appreciated in our family. My mom’s dad played piano—he could play by ear. He could listen to the radio and play exactly what he heard. I never got to meet him, but it’s in the family line.

“My mom tried to get my brother and sister into music, but it didn’t stick.”

Younger than her half-siblings by more than a decade, she said her mother signed her up for the same music lessons the other two children had gotten.

“I started with violin at the age of five, because that was what my sister played. I played for 11 years. Flute was my second instrument, which I started in middle school. I’ve been doing voice my entire life but didn’t start lessons until college.”

Cobby said she learned violin via the Suzuki method, which emphasizes playing by ear.

“Around the age of 10 is when my teacher got me to start reading. I was resistant because I thought everything was so much easier by ear!”

While her teacher held annual recitals so Cobby was performing in public by five or six; she said her first paid performance wasn’t until 2018.

“My first gig was at a French restaurant in Naples, and I still go to play there every time I go home. That was my first residency. They paid a decent amount – an average musician gigging rate.”

In between that first recital and her professional debut were years of lessons on violin and then flute, mostly in a classical setting, before she was accepted to the Berklee School of Music in Boston.

Heading West
Upon graduating in 2018, Cobby said she and her partner decided to relocate, as Boston was a tough town in which to scratch out a living as a musician.

“It is one of the biggest music cities, but you have thousands of students and teachers all competing for a very small number of gigs, and bookers who keep giving the same gigs to the same people. A lot of my peers were having to travel out of state to get work.

“My partner is from San Diego, and before we moved here, we’d done a West Coast tour and we loved what we saw. We especially loved San Diego. I immediately felt like there would be a place for me here. As of July 2019, we’ve been here ever since.

“Within the last few years, I’ve formed this band of players who get my sound.”

Cobby said she has managed to earn her living through her music and credits the San Diego music community for that. She echoed what others have observed, that musicians in San Diego look out for one another in ways that don’t often happen in other cities.

“Everyone’s been so supportive here—everybody has been nothing short of welcoming and nice.. It’s definitely a close, tight-knit community.”