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Natalie Cressman

Possessing a voice as cool and crystalline as an Alpine stream, Natalie Cressman is a rising singer/songwriter and trombonist who draws inspiration from a vast array of deep and powerful musical currents. She is releasing her 5th album in April 2019, this time in collaboration with Brazilian composer, guitarist and vocalist Ian Faquini. Drawing from impressionism, jazz, and the great Brazilian songwriting tradition, Setting Rays of Summer is a ten-track collection of original material featuring compositions in three different languages: Portuguese, English and French. With the warm instrumentation of acoustic guitar and trombone alongside two-part vocal harmonies hugging the Brazilian-accented Portuguese, Cressman & Faquini weave their musical voices together to create a fully orchestrated sound befitting a much larger ensemble.

Steadily evolving in many directions, the 27-year-old Cressman has already put down deep roots in several overlapping scenes. A prodigiously talented New York City-based trombonist, she’s spent the past nine years touring the jam band circuit as a horn player and vocalist with Phish's Trey Anastasio. Deeply versed in Latin jazz, post-bop, pop, and Brazilian music, she tapped the interlaced traditions on her first two solo albums, 2012’s Unfolding and 2014’s Turn the Sea.

She released The Traces EP in 2017, revealing her latest evolution, as she expands her creative reach into post-production with meticulously crafted soundscaped tracks inspired by R&B singer/songwriter Emily King, the Prince-championed vocal trio KING, and particularly Australian avant-soul quartet Hiatus Kaiyote. The Traces EP follows on the heels of 2016’s Etchings in Amber, a gorgeous duo album with guitarist Mike Bono that introduced Cressman as a formidable musical force without her horn. While the project focuses on songs featuring lyrics she wrote for several Bono compositions, Cressman also wrote words and music for three of her songs, contributing to the atmospheric suite of jazz-inflected, genre-bending tunes.

When she’s not performing her own music, Cressman can be found collaborating with some of the most illustrious figures in rock, funk, jazz and beyond, which have included Phish, Big Gigantic, Carlos Santana, Escort, Wycliffe Gordon, Nicholas Payton, Anat Cohen, The Motet, and Umphrey's McGee. Her passion for groove music hasn’t diluted her love of jazz. In 2016 SFJAZZ commissioned her to develop music for a concert celebrating the legacy of jazz trombonist/arranger Melba Liston. She also continues her long-standing musical relationship with world jazz innovator Peter Apfelbaum, performing with his band Sparkler. A fellow Bay Area native, Apfelbaum has hired Cressman since she was a young teen, a relationship that exemplifies the creative hothouse in which she was raised.

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Album Review

Remy Le Boeuf: Architecture of Storms

Read "Architecture of Storms" reviewed by Jack Bowers


It's hard to become bored or complacent when listening to Architecture of Storms, alto saxophonist Remy Le Boeuf's second album as leader of the twenty-member Assembly of Shadows orchestra. Every song is quite different from the others, and every one has its moments of shapeliness and charm. Le Boeuf arranged every number and composed all but Justin Vernon's “Minnesota, WI" and the album's nameplate, which he co-wrote with poet Sara Pirkle, he asserts, “on a brooding stormy ...

3
Radio & Podcasts

Mostly Newer Music Plus Some Older Tunes

Read "Mostly Newer Music Plus Some Older Tunes" reviewed by Jerome Wilson


This show has a lot of music released in the early part of 2022 plus a few older tracks. Trombones, flutes and vocals are featured. Artists heard on the show include Natalie Cressman & Ian Faquini, Bobby Zankel, Gordon Grdina, Roswell Rudd, Emile Parisien and the Scott Silbert Big Band.Playlist Henry Threadgill Sextett “I Can't Wait Till I Get Home" from The Complete Novus & Columbia Recordings of Henry Threadgill & Air (Mosaic) 00:00 Emile Parisien “Memento, Part ...

3
Radio & Podcasts

Early Spring Releases from Brandee Younger, Yvonne Flores, Kristen Lee Sergeant and duo Natalie Cressman & Ian Faquini

Read "Early Spring Releases from Brandee Younger, Yvonne Flores, Kristen Lee Sergeant and duo Natalie Cressman & Ian Faquini" reviewed by Mary Foster Conklin


This broadcast presents new releases from vocalists Yvonne Flores, Kristen Lee Sergeant, harpist Brandee Younger plus a single from duo Natalie Cressman]] & {{Ian Faquini (offering a prayer to Oxum, goddess of rivers, waterfalls and fresh water) with birthday shoutouts to Ida Cox, Mayu Saeki, Melissa Manchester, Sara Caswell, Carmen Sandim, Roseanna Vitro and Claire Daly, among others. Thanks for listening and please support the artists you hear by purchasing their music during this time of pandemic so they can ...

Album Review

Remy Le Boeuf's Assembly of Shadows: Architecture of Storms

Read "Architecture of Storms" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi


Remy Le Boeuf è uno dei nomi emergenti nell'ambito dell'arrangiamento e della conduzione orchestrale. Dopo il sorprendente Assembly of Shadows del 2019, il sassofonista e bandleader californiano (a New York dal 2004) torna con la sua orchestra irrobustita nel numero e nella qualità dei singoli componenti. Tra i nuovi ingressi troviamo in particolare il trombettista Mike Rodriguez e il sassofonista Dayna Stephens, che caratterizzano un paio di brani, anche se il lavoro di Le Boeuf è prettamente ...

2
Album Review

Jacob Garchik: Clear Line

Read "Clear Line" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky


As strange as it may sound, sometimes the best way to break free is to simply box yourself in. Limitations obviously cut off certain possibilities entirely, but they open the mind to so many others in the process. Composer (and trombonist) Jacob Garchik has long subscribed to that line of thinking and he takes it to bold heights on this, the most original, least derivative big band recording to arrive in ages. Basically throwing out the rule ...

Album Review

Remy Le Boeuf's Assembly of Shadows: Assembly of Shadows

Read "Assembly of Shadows" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi


Dopo aver debuttato in veste di leader nel 2019 con il ricercato album Light as a World (un sestetto con, tra gli altri, Aaron Parks e Walter Smith III) il 33enne sassofonista e compositore d'origini californiane, presenta un ambizioso progetto orchestrale comprendente la suite “Assembly of Shadows," un'altra sua composizione ("Strata") e una riscrittura di “Honeymooners" di Ornette Coleman. Prima di questi lavori ha condiviso la leadership del gruppo Le Boeuf Brothers col suo gemello Pascal. La ...

32
Album Review

Remy Le Boeuf: Assembly Of Shadows

Read "Assembly Of Shadows" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


With his second date as a leader, multi-woodwind artist Remy Le Boeuf performs these largely self-penned comps with an orchestra, featuring notable musicians Anna Webber (woodwinds), Alex Goodman (guitar) and other jazz VIPs. Here, the leader's composing acuity brims with multicolored hues and harmonious arrangements, largely executed with a composite of modern jazz and classical inferences via gradual buildups, brash outbreaks and complex unison choruses that occasionally mimic single note bop lines. Sure enough, this young visionary's unflagging creative spirit ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

DDG19 Big Band

Self Produced
2024

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Auburn Whisper

GroundUP Music
2022

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Architecture of Storms

Soundspore Records
2021

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Clear Line

Yestereve Records
2020

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Setting Rays Of Summer

Self Produced
2019

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Assembly of Shadows

Soundspore Records
2019

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