Not Every Singer Is Here to Start the Party
Jazz chanteuse Risa Branch on animal-rights activism, switching genres, and the healing power of music
“I don’t know any jazz singers apart from you,” I tell Risa Branch as we peruse the dinner menu at Farmacy Kitchen, a pop-up vegan restaurant in SoHo. “You’re a kind of time traveler.” She may look like a 21st-century New Yorker — hair in long locs, an intricate silver ring running the length of her index finger, the chill-and-steady presence of someone who meditates every morning — but when Risa opens her mouth to sing, you get why fans would liken her to an “old-school jazz singer from the ’30s” even when she was performing electro-soul on the Vancouver indie scene five and ten years ago. Farmacy is a British company testing the New York City market (through February 2020), but the fern-colored velveteen cushions, ivied wallpaper, and dividers teeming with palm fronds are a fitting backdrop for a conversation about the greenest city either of us have ever seen. Risa moved back to the States four years ago to be a little closer to her family in Texas, but she still misses Vancouver.
Risa orders the truffle mac ’n cheese, and I go for the Mexican bowl with sprouted coriander rice and some pretty excellent guac. “I was the kind of kid who’d come out to the living room with my…
