Vocalist/Trombonist NATALIE CRESSMAN
Melds Sophistication of Modern Jazz with
Indie Rock on Sophomore Release, Turn The Sea -
Melds Sophistication of Modern Jazz with
Indie Rock on Sophomore Release, Turn The Sea -
Available March 11 via Cressman Music
"Her veteran skills as a trombonist are clear, but what's even more
impressive is her vocal performance and talents as a lyricist."
- The Huffington Post
impressive is her vocal performance and talents as a lyricist."
- The Huffington Post
"'Turn The Sea' is the sound of an artist discovering her unique voice.
I can't really compare it to anything, which is the best compliment of all.
It sounds like Natalie." - Trey Anastasio
I can't really compare it to anything, which is the best compliment of all.
It sounds like Natalie." - Trey Anastasio
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.
Cressman has spent much of
the last three 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."
Inspired in part by those bandleaders' boundary-blurring approaches, 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.
"I want to make music that my own generation can respond to," Cressman
says. "I would really love for anyone to listen to my music and find
something to relate to. I don't want to shut people out by being overly
sophisticated and esoteric, even though everything I write is jazz-based
and more dynamic and spontaneous than a lot of the music that is wildly
popular."
The disc features a stellar eight-piece band, largely culled from Cressman's Bay Area peers: trumpeter Ivan Rosenberg, flutist and clarinetist Steven Lugerner, saxophonist James Casey, keyboardist Samora Pinderhughes, guitarist Gabe Schneider, bassist Jonathan Stein, and drummer Michael Mitchell
join the bandleader, who sings and plays trombone. The two talents, she
says, are intimately related. "I think the fact that I sing influences
and affects the way I play the trombone and vice versa. The voice in my
head that I write with and play with and sing with is the same, but the
medium is different."
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Photo Credit: Ivan Rosenberg
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Cressman was raised in San
Francisco by parents who guaranteed she would be constantly surrounded
by music. Her mother, Sandy Cressman, is a jazz vocalist who immersed
herself deeply into the traditions of Brazilian music; her father, Jeff
Cressman, is a recording engineer, trombonist, and longtime member of
Santana. Natalie quite naturally began studying trombone with her
father, but set out to be a dancer rather than a musician. She was an
aspiring ballet dancer until her junior year of high school, when an
injury set her on a different path.
Once
she set her sights on a career in music, her parents provided not only
role models but active assistance, helping to provide her with some of
her earliest opportunities. "Seeing how inspired and passionate my
parents were about what they were doing lit a fire in me once I decided
to go for music," Cressman recalls.
Her parents provided entrée
to a number of enviable opportunities, but Cressman's own prodigious
gifts continued to merit her presence in any number of high-profile
settings. She soon found herself playing salsa with Uruguayan
percussionist Edgardo Cambon e Orquesta Candela, Latin Jazz with Pete
Escovedo's Latin Jazz Orchestra, world music with Jai Uttal and the
Pagan Love Orchestra, and globally-inspired avant-garde jazz with
multi-instrumentalist Peter Apfelbaum, a family friend who became a key
mentor. Cressman continues to work with Apfelbaum in his ensembles, The
New York Hieroglyphics and Sparkler.
Cressman switched coasts in
2009 to study at the Manhattan School of Music, and the following year
was enlisted by jam band pioneer Trey Anastasio for his touring band. "I
first met Natalie when she was 18, and I was instantly floored by how
melodically and naturally she played and sang," Anastasio says. "Natalie
is the rarest of musicians. Born into a musical family and raised in a
home filled with the sounds of Brazilian music, jazz and Afro-Cuban
rhythms, she is seeping with innate musicality. Musicality is in her
DNA."
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. I find myself between two worlds with the music
that I'm writing; it's not bread and butter jazz but it's not wholly
anything else either."
It would be equally
difficult to pinpoint Cressman's music, and at the same time equally
hard to resist its allure. The album's title track marries her silken
voice and lyrical trombone with a surging rhythm evocative of waves
crashing and receding; "Fortune's Fool" is a melancholy love song
propelled by a somber, Middle Eastern-inflected pulse; "New Moon" sets
enigmatic lyrics to a soulful, flute and Rhodes-driven groove which
segues into a soaring chorus that draws on West African rhythms.
Lyrically, Cressman hopes to
connect with listeners by dealing with universal subjects, while
offering her own unique twist. "It's interesting how many different ways
you can write about love," she says. "I like to put on different
characters when I compose, because I feel like my own life is often too
ordinary to write only autobiographical songs. Sometimes I use snippets
of other people's stories to create a new character and write from their
perspective."
The album also features
songs by two of Cressman's inspirations, reconfigured for her ensemble
and voice. Norwegian singer-songwriter Hanne Hukkelberg provides "Do Not
As I Do," while "Blindsided" is a song by indie favorite Bon Iver. The
latter maintains the ethereal mood conjured by the original. "He gets a
lot of mileage out of not too much," Cressman says of Bon Iver
singer-songwriter Justin Vernon. "I'm trying to discover how little I
can write and still have it mean as much as possible."
The album ends with a remix
of opening track "Turn the Sea," courtesy of the band's bassist in his
electronica-producer guise of JNTHN STEIN. The track hints at yet more
future directions for the adventurous Cressman, while making literal the
song's message of risk-taking. "It's a good bookend," she says, "coming
back to where you began but in a totally different place."
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| Natalie Cressman - Turn The Sea - EPK |
Upcoming Natalie Cressman Tour Dates:
March 20 / Church of Boston / Boston, MA
March 21 / Nectar's / Burlington, VT
March 30 / Joe's Pub / New York, NY
Natalie Cressman· Turn The Sea
Cressman Music · Release Date: March 11, 2014
For more information on Natalie Cressman, please visit: NatalieCressman.com
For media information, please contact:
DL Media · 610-667-0501
Matthew Jurasek· matthew@dlmediamusic.com
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