Trombone Shorty

• Trombone Shorty

Part Jimi Hendrix, part James Brown and all New Orleans, Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews is the bandleader and frontman of Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, a hard-edged funk band that employs brass-band beats, rock dynamics and improvisation in a jazz tradition. NPR hailed him as “New Orleans’ brightest new star in a generation,” and New York Magazine wrote that “Trombone Shorty takes in a century-plus worth of sounds—ragtime and jazz and gospel and soul and R&B and hip-hop—and attacks everything he plays with festive fervor.”

A 2011 GRAMMY Award nominee for his album Backatown (Verve), Andrews’ virtuosity and high-energy live shows have drawn unanimous raves worldwide with Rolling Stone calling him a “must-see act.” He was named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” Class of 2016 for Music along with Selena Gomez, The Weeknd and Jon Batiste. His illustrated autobiography for young readers, Trombone Shorty, was named a 2016 Caldecott Honor Book by the American Library Association. Andrews made his feature film debut in 2015—using his trombone to voice the iconic sound of the adult characters in the animated box office smash The Peanuts Movie.

Trombone Shorty’s 2017 Blue Note debut Parking Lot Symphony is a 12-track tour de force produced by Chris Seefried (Fitz and the Tantrums, Andra Day) featuring 10 original songs along with covers of Allen Toussaint (“Here Come The Girls”) and The Meters (“It Ain’t No Use”). True to its title, the album contains multitudes of sound—from brass band blare and deep-groove funk to bluesy beauty and hip-hop/pop swagger.

Andrews is passing down his musical knowledge and keeping the New Orleans brass band tradition alive through his own Trombone Shorty Foundation and Music Academy, and since 2014 has worked as a “Turnaround Artist’” with the Turnaround Arts Initiative, a program that helps low-performing schools improve through intensive arts programs.