Jennifer Hartswick is one of the most exciting performers in music today. She inspires audiences all over the world with her powerful voice and commanding trumpet playing.
Jennifer’s live performances are renowned as spontaneous, joyful and contagious. Her natural charisma and sincerity shines through, and each performance is a celebration of musical collaboration. And whether she is wailing on the trumpet or singing an intimate vocal solo, her performance is all part of a single seamless instrument, one that is played not only with astounding technical proficiency, but also with sensitivity, conviction and heart.
Hartswick has shared the stage and studio with many musical titans, including Trey Anastasio, Carlos Santana, Bruce Hornsby, The Rolling Stones, Phish, Herbie Hancock and Christian McBride.
Natalie Cressman
Raised in an eclectic musical household, Natalie Cressman has only continued to diversify and expand her musical universe. Still in her early 20s, the trombonist/composer/vocalist has assimilated the full range of her sonic influences into a startlingly mature, strikingly original voice that melds the sophistication of modern jazz with captivating storytelling and intoxicating melodies reminiscent of indie rock’s most distinctive songwriters. 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.
Cressman has spent much of the last four years touring the jam band circuit with Phish’s Trey Anastasio, while also performing with jazz luminaries Nicholas Payton, Wycliffe Gordon, and Peter Apfelbaum. Those varied experiences are reflected on her gorgeous second release, Turn the Sea. Anastasio calls the album “a beacon of light in an increasingly cold and mechanized era of music. Natalie is standing on the precipice of an incredible life in music, and if this album is any indication of where she’s headed, then I’ll be listening every step of the way.” Following her jazz-oriented debut, Unfolding, with the more song-based Turn the Sea was at least partially a result of her tenure with Anastasio, Cressman says. “Trey always wants to include the audience, but he doesn’t dumb down his music to do it.” Turn the Sea reveals a sound that’s utterly uncategorizable but instantly accessible, one that belies but is also a product of Cressman’s youth. What her music exposes 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. Cressman is an artist endorser for King Trombones.
