Trombone Shorty

Biography

Trombone Shorty is the best-known moniker for Troy Andrews. He was born into a well-known New Orleans musical family in 1986. Andrews began playing music at a very early age and was playing professionally at the age of five. He mastered trombone, trumpet, and drums, eventually choosing the trombone as his principal instrument and thus picking up his nickname. So advanced was he that, at the age of eight, a club in the city’s Tremé district, where he was born and raised, was named Trombone Shorts in his honor. Andrews became a member of the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts’ (NOCCA) musical education program for high school students. At NOCCA, Andrews took music theory, ear training, and instrumental instruction courses under Clyde Kerr, Jr. and Kent Jordan, among others. In 2003 he was one of five young musicians chosen as the subject for a PBS television documentary, and also performed on the network’s nationally broadcast tribute to Louis Armstrong, directed by Wynton Marsalis.