Vancouver’s Bria Skonberg has her sights set on New York City, but first she’ll join Gypsy-jazz group Van Django in a MusicFest tribute to Django Reinhardt.

The devout have plenty of options for pilgrimage. Mecca, Jerusalem, Lhasa, and the banks of the Ganges all have their devotees, and wars have been fought over which is better. But for aspiring jazz musicians, there’s really only one place to go: New York City, the town where modern jazz was born and still the undisputed capital of cool.

From Tokyo and Tehran; from London, Paris, and Berlin; and from small towns all over the United States, thousands of young performers annually pull up roots and head off to an uncertain Apple future. Canada has contributed its share of seekers too, and in just a few weeks Bria Skonberg will be joining their number.

“I’m heading out in mid September or early October,” says the vibrant local trumpet player and singer, reached on her cellphone as she’s driving home from a rehearsal with local Gypsy-jazz ensemble Van Django. “Just as soon as my visa comes through, I’m gone.”

Tellingly, though, Skonberg isn’t motivated by thoughts of greener pastures, as she’s doing just fine here. When she’s not gigging with her own Hot Five quintet and Big Bang Jazz Band, you can find her performing as featured soloist with the Dal Richards Orchestra, or on-stage with the all-female Mighty Aphrodite sextet. Her goal in New York, she says, is to pursue a graduate degree in the school of hard knocks while carving out a career on an instrument that offers few female role models.

“Vancouver is a beautiful place, and I’ve enjoyed it so much, but right now it’s not really about being comfortable,” says the Chilliwack native, who’ll join Van Django in a MusicFest Vancouver tribute to Django Reinhardt at the Norman Rothstein Theatre on August 9. “I think I just need to get uprooted in order to learn a lot more. As I do a lot of travelling, it just comes down to ”˜What are you doing on your days off?’ And on my days off there, I’ll definitely be parking myself outside the doors of the likes of Warren Vaché and Wynton Marsalis, trying to soak up whatever information they can give me. So that’s my plan—just to play lots and eat great food.”

Skonberg’s plan—the “playing lots” part of it, anyway—sounds strangely familiar to Ingrid Jensen, another B.C.–born jazz trumpeter who’s done remarkably well for herself in an often competitive environment. It’s the same path she took 20 years ago, after studying jazz at Malaspina College and Boston’s renowned Berklee College of Music. Today, Jensen doesn’t deny the importance of a good education, but it was what she learned busking on the streets and in the subway stations of New York City that really prepared her for an international career.

“If people had followed us around at Berklee, I think they would have been shocked by how little class time we actually put in,” she says with a laugh, reached at home in New York. “It was more like, ”˜I can’t wait to get out of ear training so I can go warm up and play some tunes with my ensemble.’ In a way, that approach saved a lot of us in that generation—or not saved us, but inspired us to come out with a voice of our own.”

In New York City, Jensen found the kind of mentors that Skonberg hopes to meet, citing pianist Hal Galper and fellow trumpeter Freddie Hubbard as being especially helpful. Here at home, Skonberg has benefited from Richards’s support—which, as the big-band veteran told the Straight in a 2007 interview, was readily given.

“She’s so aware, and so bright, and so mature for her age,” Richards enthused at the time. “I dropped her into our six-piece, all-male brass section and, man, she nailed it, without a rehearsal, without anything. She’s been with us ever since.”

B.C.–born Ingrid Jensen has personalized her playing by drawing on her Danish heritage, as well as working in some new electronic treatments.

Skonberg and Jensen share more than being women in an area that, until recently, has been almost exclusively a masculine domain. Both started young: Jensen in her early teens, and Skonberg at 11. Both, unsurprisingly, cite Louis Armstrong as a formative influence, with Skonberg’s Hot Five sharing a name with one of Satchmo’s most famous bands. Beyond that, though, they’re very different musicians. At 26, Skonberg has already won some notable honours, including the 2006 CBC Jazz Award of Merit, but she’s still finding her voice as an artist. (For now, that voice includes hot jazz, swing standards, and even some pop-inflected songwriting, as displayed on her 2009 CD Fresh.) The 44-year-old Jensen, by contrast, is solidly ensconced in the modern mainstream scene, although she’s personalized her approach by drawing on her Danish heritage, particularly in her Nordic Connect band, which also features her saxophone-playing sister Christine, American drummer Jon Wikan, and two Swedish musicians, pianist Maggi Olin and bassist Mattias Welin. For her own quartet’s MusicFest showcase—at the Norman Rothstein Theatre on August 14—Jensen is also going to be exploring some new electronic treatments that she says are further expanding her palette.

“I have some delays I use, and some wah-like approaches, although I don’t actually use a wah-wah pedal,” Jensen explains. “So there are some atmospheric things that I’ll set up: drones and colours that the band will play around with. But I sneak them in, so that hopefully it’s never in one’s face.”

It’s not the electronics that make Jensen’s playing stand out, however, so much as her ability to be beautifully lyrical without being unduly sentimental. That’s an approach her younger colleague readily admits she’s in awe of.

“I wish I could do half the things that Ingrid Jensen does,” Skonberg notes. “So when I get to New York, I’m going to have to chase her down.”