Troy Andrews was handed a trombone at the age of 4, and he’s never looked back.

“I think at that time that was one of the only other instruments that wasn’t occupied and that actually worked in the house,” he says. “I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I was able to get some type of note out.”

Raised in a musical family in the heart of New Orleans, his older brother James already played the trumpet, which made the smaller instrument off limits for Andrews. The long brass instrument was twice as big as he was, earning him the neighborhood nickname “Trombone Shorty,” a moniker he performs under to this day.

For the past decade or so, he’s played as Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue, releasing four albums, the first of which, 2010’s Backatown, earned a Grammy nomination for best contemporary jazz album. Although he doesn’t necessarily consider himself a jazz musician — his self-proclaimed “supafunkrock” genre is a fusion of jazz, hip-hop, funk and rock, a sort of musical gumbo, he says.

“I just look at the people that came before me and try to take from what they created and put my own stamp on it and have my own identity,” he says. “We’re all playing in the tradition without trying to play the traditional music. But we’re keeping that tradition alive.”

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