The Los Angeles music world is buzzin’ (hey, this is Buzzine, right?) about the Ruby Friedman Orchestra.  The group’s appealing, off-center pop is winning fans wherever and whenever they play.  The latest gig is set for this today, November 19th at The Hotel Cafe in Hollywood.

The Orchestra is led by visionary and darn smart Friedman, fast on the draw with quips, literary and historic references, plus she has one swell voice filled with just the right amount of inviting coo and consoling ache.  She has brought those textured, emotion-dipped sounds to clubs all over town, including the Hyperion Tavern, Safari Sam’s, the Mint, the Viper Room, Three Clubs and the Echo.  All the while, her following grows.

Friedman grew up in Southern California but with a distinct east coast family background.  “I was raised by a pack of Jewish New Yorkers transplanted to Orange County as they produced me, the last of five kids,” she said.

Showbiz fever hit her mighty young. “I was singing and schmaltzing it up straight out of the chute, so that pretty much makes me a veteran vaudevillian,” she said. “My first time on stage, I was five years old playing Gretl in The Sound Of Music.”

She wouldn’t go pro until some years later, though.  “Well, we would have to define ‘professional.’  If you mean professional by getting paid, I think I have not performed professionally yet…” she joked. “ Although that strip tease I did at my parents’ parties should count.”

Songwriting wasn’t a conscious effort initially, as she’s one of those artists who’s been writing tunes in her head for a good part of her life.

“I wrote many songs but didn’t realize they were songs,” she said. “Music just came out of my mouth and head; I’m like one of those fish-head spouts on a water fountain.”

Friedman looks to more than music figures for inspiration. “I have more heroes that were unmusical, for example Hamlet, Falstaff…but, okay, if you insist: Mahalia Jackson, Bessie Smith, Etta James, The Beatles, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Frank Black, Brendan Flowers, System of A Down, Bob Dylan, The Pixies, Langhorne Slim, X,  Wanda Jackson…” And her list could go on and on, she said.

The concept of the Orchestra came to her two winters ago, while sitting in an Intellectual History class at UCLA with one Professor Bloch discussing Thoreau and Fuller and Emerson — the transcendentalists.

“I had a vision…or a curse, depending upon how you look at it,” she said. “We will have the full effect eventually — you know, harp, tympani, etc.

“The motivation behind calling our thing The Ruby Friedman Orchestra is partly an ironic, post-feminist statement, mainly to call out or underscore the compositional contributions that are made off-stage by a female who performs on-stage as the leader of an orchestra while challenging assumptions of who/what a conductor is,” she explained.

“My Great Great Aunt Faye sang with the Benny Goodman Orchestra and other big bands of her day, and she received no meaningful posterity in the way of recordings, so it’s kind of an homage to her,” Friedman said. “Also, it seems to me that females are unequally perceived as major contributors to sonic composition. As front-persons/singers, we are naturally assumed to just be judged as sex objects or not sex objects.  If we are not deemed sex objects, then the musical contributions become moot. Nobody cares. It is very tragic. I see this happen to all kinds of talented girls. And when I say ’sex object,’ I mean the definition of the status quo’s variety which has nothing to do with intelligence and personal agency and originality, and everything to do with how mold-able/nonthreatening/unthinking she is in relation to male-appointed power — how well, in other words, she will fit along with the others and go down smoothly with the public as easy marketing — a real disservice to the humanities…and then we call them “artists”? Basically, I am seeking to overthrow assumptions here that are not real in terms of the general public and what they want and deserve and are hungry for, but in the media-promoted sex object and the continuous force-feeding of this standard.”

So part of what the Orchestra is about is challenging those preconceptions regarding women and music, and, of course, having a good time along the way.

“If a female is a singer/songwriter, she is expected to sing with a guitar on stage. For my part, I wonder, ‘Why would I do that? I have the best guitar player around in Adam Zimmon. Who needs me playing along?’” she said. “I write songs and parts, but live, the performance and dramatic edge and intent of the lyrics would be compromised if I was handcuffed to my guitar — a silly thing. Anyway, lest no one forget, Ruby Friedman leads an orchestra of great musicians, and she is doubly honored and proud to lead them in this battle.”

Part of Friedman’s quite diverse collision of styles includes mining areas of symphonic pop, in line, in part, with Spector/Brian Wilson “little symphonies,” but for adults, not kids, though she doesn’t quite see the Wilson element at all.

“I hope this doesn’t offend, but I actually cannot stand The Beach Boys. Maybe you are picking up on The Beatles and heavy old orchestra, as in ragtime-y big band jazz meets new wave/punk ethos…  It’s really just the melody, and then the counter-melody and Hammond B3, trombone, violins, string/guitars, Moog Synth and bass lines that you are hearing…along with my voice, which is influenced by all the greats of yore.”

Friedman’s original songs include “Shooting Star,” “Hang Around,” and “Go About Your Day,” all found on an EP that could and should be released right now as is for wider exposure.  She’s garnered local area air-wave attention on radio stations such as the terribly missed late Indie 103.1, as well as Rodney Bingenheimer’s “Rodney on the Roq” on KROQ. Friedman also has recorded and performs The Beatles’ “I Want You/She’s So Heavy.”

“This song was covered because my drummer/producer had already worked it up in NYC and needed the vocal,” she said. “But, oddly enough, before he approached me with the idea, it was the last Beatles song I heard, five minutes earlier in the cafe near the studio.”

So once again, a hiccup of fate and some synchronicity with the sonic stars guided her.  She seems to be getting a lot of that.  Meanwhile, past the upcoming Hotel Cafe show, look for Friedman elsewhere around town and, if cities like New York, San Francisco and other burgs are lucky, they’ll get treated to a band visit down the road.

Find out more at RubyFriedman.com and myspace.com/rubyfriedman.