Saturday, August 13, 2011 | AT&T Main Stage | 2pm Saturday, August 13, 2011 | Blues Stage | 9pm
Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews means exuberant music. On the festival circuit as well as on their recordings, his band delivers combination of “virtuosity and high-energy, party-down intensity”. In fact, The Edge of U2 proclaimed himself nothing less than “mesmerized” after seeing them play.
A large part of Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue’s appeal is their genre obliterating appetite for influences and styles. At this year’s New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Troy played with Kid Rock, Glenn David Andrews, the Neville Brothers, the Warren Hayes Band and the Strokes all in the space of one weekend. On top of that, he has recorded with the likes of Allen Toussaint and toured with Lenny Kravitz at the tender age of 18.
Troy hails from the sixth ward of New Orleans or in local parlance, the Tremé - the oldest black neighborhood in the U.S. There he was dubbed "Trombone Shorty" at the age of four by his brother who had observed that the kid’s instrument was twice as long as he was tall. A mere 19 years later, in 2009, Troy became the youngest person ever to be featured on the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival’s Congo Square official poster. The following year the band produced Backatown its first recording to be released nationwide, and which has been met with rave reviews.
