Natalie Cressman
Natalie Cressman

Natalie Cressman

Hailing from an illustrious musical family, Natalie Cressman, the San Francisco-raised trombonist, vocalist and composer has been adopted by a disparate cast of masters, and at 21 years old she’s honed a preternaturally worldly conception of her own.

From Carnegie Hall to the House of Blues, from the Apollo to Lincoln Center, her versatility and enthusiasm for new music has propelled her into a richly diverse musical career. An accomplished improviser who has performed with Nicholas Payton, Wycliffe Gordon, and Peter Apfelbaum’s NY Hieroglyphics Ensemble, she’s gained her widest exposure through two years of touring with Phish’s Trey Anastasio. At the same time she’s managed to excel in her studies at Manhattan School of Music and perform at top New York jazz spots with her own band. Unfolding captures her rapidly blossoming sensibility, a sound shaped by her love of Cuban, Brazilian and West African music, indie rock, funk and the post-bop continuum.

Whether playing an original, reinterpreting a standard or exploring a jazz classic, Cressman fully embraces the imperative to render the music in her own image. What her work with Secret Garden reveals is an utterly contemporary artist steeped in several traditions, an artist who sees no barriers between the incalculable accomplishments of the past and the urgent demands of the present. While Cressman possesses a highly expressive voice on trombone, smooth and gleaming one minute and gruff and earthy the next, the album’s biggest surprise is her crystalline singing voice, a thing of jaw- dropping beauty. Cressman is an artist endorser for King Trombones.