Troy Andrews Orleans & Claiborne CD

Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews and his band Orleans Avenue are the next big thing out of New Orleans. While "Shorty" and his band are not yet out of their teens, their jazz/funk stylings are ferocious compositions that can hold court with anybody at anytime in any arena. The general music listening public wants to hear good tunes played with conviction. They want the musicians on the bandstand to believe in what they're playing, to be excited and to be capable of displaying an impressive array of musical chops. This combination of factors is more elusive than it might seem, for the forces of youthful exuberance and instrumental virtuosity are usually found at opposite ends of the spectrum: young performers are usually all about the energy and the potential, while veteran cats on the scene can play just about anything, but somehow they lost the fire along the way. Every once in a blue moon, though, along comes someone who can merge the forces of exuberance and virtuosity and unleash them on an unsuspecting public-the latest in this exclusive line of blue moon "specials" being Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews. While it may seem like hyperbole to place him in a class of folks like Stevie Wonder, Derek Trucks and Miles Davis (people who were musical shamen at a young age), Andrews belongs there and any doubts you may harbor will evaporate after seeing him perform. Andrews plays trombone and trumpet. He is a man to be reckoned with on both. In fact, even before he was a man, he was a man to be reckoned with in musical conversations. A product of New Orleans culturally rich Treme neighborhood, Andrews was a bandleader by the age of 6. That's right, at 6 years old, he was leading a band on the streets of the French Quarter, and they made so much damn scratch that "Shorty" had to invest in extra belts to wrap around his waist, for the weight of all the coins he was collecting was dragging his pants down. While Andrews was promenading around the streets of New Orleans as a youngster with his band in tow, he was also absorbing lessons at the knee of his older brother James, a dynamic musical performer known all around the city as the "Satchmo of the Ghetto." It is safe to say that by the time Andrews hit his early teens, he had a PhD in the ways of the streets, which you can still hear in his music. But he also has elegance and class, gleaned from his successful studies at the prestigious New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (NOCCA) Institute (he is a recent graduate, joining the ranks of other grads like Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Harry Connick Jr.

, and Nicholas Payton). This collision of the streets and the classroom, the dive bar and the ballroom, well, it is powerful stuff, like Muhammad Ali taking Bridget Bardot out for a spin on the dance floor. The here and now finds Andrews a fully developed performer locked, loaded and ready to burst into national consciousness. His current project is a band called Orleans Avenue, a jazzy funk hybrid populated with musicians like Andrews who are young in age only. While no one in the band is of legal drinking age, this is no novelty act, no cute children butchering "Cherokee." Orleans Avenue brings the heat-a typicalperformance finds the audience wound up in merry confusion. Jaded jazz-heads shake their heads in disbelief while merry maidens shake what they got with glee, then things reach a fevered pitch when Andrews starts his circular breathing show-one note sustained in pristine beauty while the band vamps on a second line beat and sax player James Martin dances so ugly it's funky.

This all comes back to the virtuosity vs. exuberance issue, which Orleans Avenue makes moot because these youngsters effortlessly combine both traits, weaving them together into something as natural as the pairing of a bowlegged woman with a knock-kneed man. If you are serious about booking serious music that is serious fun, it is time for you to get in touch with Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews and Orle