Christopher Crenshaw

Chris Crenshaw was born in Thomson, Georgia in 1982. An early love for piano led to his first gig with Echoes of Joy, his father Casper’s gospel quartet group.

He started playing the trombone at 11, graduated from Thomson High School in 2001, and received his bachelor of music in jazz performance with honors from Valdosta State University in 2005. In 2007, Crenshaw received his master of music in jazz studies from The Juilliard School, where his teachers included Dr. Douglas Farwell and Wycliffe Gordon.

He has appeared as a side person on trumpeter and fellow JLCO member Marcus Printup’s Ballads All Night and on Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton Play the Blues.

In 2006, Crenshaw joined the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and in 2012 he composed God’s Trombones, a spiritually focused work which was premiered by the orchestra at Jazz at Lincoln Center.