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Anje West

One of Australia's finest performers of bossa nova and Brazilian jazz.

About Me

In 1998, with no Portuguese language skills, but a heart full of desire to perform Brazilian music, Anje, along with husband and musical director Kym Ambrose (vibes) founded The View From Madeleine's Couch; a band still going strong 24 years down the track, and specialising in their own original Brazilian-influenced music and their favourite tunes from the bossa, samba, and Brazilian jazz realms. This is a band that has very much put their own stamp on the genre, preferring to take the music and run off somewhere beautiful with it. Rather than exacting replication, the music is performed with reverence and respect to its roots, and the band's sound remains unique in Brazilian/Jazz music in Australia.

Anje is considered one of Australia's finest interpreters of the genre, and is an award-winning songwriter, taking out the Queensland Music Award for World Music Song of the Year in 2009, and nominated for a further award in the jazz category in the 2020 awards. With a background in street theatre, blues bands, choirs and small vocal ensembles, flying headlong into a career as a singer of Brazilian songs didn't seem like a given!

But the passion for Brazilian music was (and remains), very strong. Anje has traveled three times to live and study music in Brazil, working on her percussion skills with some of Rio's top teachers including Bernardo Aguiar and Pedro Lima. On the band's last tour to Brazil, they were joined by legendary drummer Marcio Bahia (Hermeto Pascoal, Hamilton de Holanda), bassist to Joao Donato and Marcos Valle, Mazinho Ventura, and jazz guitarist Dino Rangel, becoming a truly international OzBrazilian band.

In April/May 2019, Marcio Bahia returned to Australia to play drums and percussion on the band's latest album, Bossa Nova Sunset Club, which features original music, alongside some of the most beautiful compositions from Brazilian composers Jobim, Joyce Moreno, Joao Donato and Dorival Caymmi. It has been described as 'a landmark album' and 'a significant contribution to the history of Brazilian-influenced music in Australia'.

Anje has also been featured in Women In Voice (2003 and 2018), the longest-running show of its kind in Australia, that each year highlights the work of five outstanding Australian female performers. She worked closely with vocalists Barbara Fordham and Leah Cotterell for Musica Viva in Schools for 14 years. Their touring program saw them travel the length and breadth of Australia, from remote indigenous communities to almost every capital city and regional area, taking their beautiful 3-part harmony show into primary schools around the country...about 65,000 children have attended a Gypsy Tober concert!

In between tours, Anje has recorded two EP's and three full-length albums with her band: Bossa Nova Sunset Club - The View From Madeleine's Couch 2019/20 Casa da Boa Vida – The View From Madeleine’s Couch 2009 Sabor – The View From Madeleine’s Couch 2007 Tranquilo – The View From Madeleine’s Couch 2005 The View From Madeleine’s Couch (self titled). 2002

..and appeared on 11 other recordings as either a featured or backing vocalist, including two compilations of the Worldly Women collective, two albums with The Flannellettes All-Star A'capella and a featured, improvised performance with The Kzher Ensemble (The Works of Rumi).

More recently, Anje has been writing and producing shows for the band, under the The Bossa Nova Sunset Club banner, recounting the birth of bossa nova in Rio in the 50's, entwined with her own story of musical discovery. Three incarnations of the show had sell-out seasons for three consecutive Anywhere Festival seasons, and Anje also fronts To Sergio With Love, the only band in Australia that celebrates the music of Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66. In a “now for something completely different” moment, Anje also instigated the formation of Beyond The Blue Horizon in 2020; a band dedicated to the quirky, cool country-rock stylings of Mike Nesmith and featuring pedal-steel maestro, Michel Rose.

My Jazz Story

I met ... Roberto Menescal, Toninho Horta and Mauricio Einhorn in Rio de Janeiro The first jazz records I bought were... Jazz Samba - Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd and Wild by Tania Maria...before I even knew that Brazilian music would become my life's work!