Audrey Powne

Audrey Powne has issued recordings as both trumpeter and vocalist across an array of ensemble and solo contexts that draw from traditional and contemporary jazz, neo-soul, post-disco R&B, and additional idioms. An established songwriter, producer, and arranger within Melbourne, Australia’s music ecosystem, she began issuing solo work in a sustained manner toward the close of the 2010s; this activity culminated in 2024 with From the Fire, a compact collection of richly arranged chamber soul that appeared on the BBE imprint.

Born Audrey Boyle in Warragul, Powne began with classical piano study in childhood before shifting focus to jazz upon adopting the trumpet. She completed a Bachelor of Music at Monash University, spent a period instructing high-school students, and grew increasingly involved in Melbourne’s local scene. Throughout the second half of the 2010s she appeared alongside Maceo Parker while also recording and performing as a member of the progressive R&B outfit Leisure Centre—originally called the Do Yo Thangs—and as one half of Au Dré, whose releases evoked 1980s R&B spanning electro-funk to new jack swing. In 2018, amid activity with those two groups, she issued her debut solo single, “Flowers,” a theatrical pop-soul piece scored for strings and harp. The following year she toured the United States in support of the Teskey Brothers, took part in the Banff International Workshop in Jazz & Creative Music, and supplied “Bleeding Hearts” to the Melbourne-focused Brownswood Recordings anthology Sunny Side Up.

After a temporary move to New York, Powne tracked the EP Bed I Made, which surfaced in 2020. That same year she joined three other Australian musicians she had met at Banff to release a self-titled album under the name Aura. A further solo single arrived in 2022—the same year she performed with Midnight Oil—after which she aligned with BBE. Her first proper solo album, From the Fire, emerged in 2024; she composed and produced every track.