It’s hard to imagine Natalie Cressman as anything but a musician. The daughter of two West Coast jazz musicians is in her early 20s, with two solo albums and going on five years as a member of Trey Anastasio’s solo band, and her musical career seems less like a choice and more like predestination. But that wasn’t always the case.
“I was interested in all the performing arts when I was growing up,” she says. “Later on in my teens, I was really serious about dancing ballet, and I was in a pre-professional program for that. I really thought that was what I was going to pursue for a living.”
Ballet was one of Cressman’s many passions, along with acting, the piano, and playing trombone. But foot injury during her sophomore year of high school put her ballet dreams on hold. She filled the void with music instead.
“I had all this free time, and so I ended up forming a band with some friends in the band department at school. We formed a rock band and played shows, and I had this big epiphany that this is what I wanted to do,” Cressman says.
She hasn’t looked back since. She doesn’t really have time — along with her stints in Anastasio’s band, Cressman regularly tours on her own and plays freelance gigs on the side. She’ll be in Portsmouth at The Press Room on June 7.
“The great thing about music is you’re always pushing … to be the best version of yourself.” — Natalie Cressman
Cressman wound up in Anastasio’s band after her father, Jeff Cressman, recommended her for a spot. Also a trombonist, her father was a longtime member of Santana, and briefly a member of Anastasio’s band. Anastasio brought her on board, and Cressman found herself starting college and touring the jam-band circuit at the same time.
“It was kind of surreal,” she says. “The music Trey makes is so far outside what I had experienced before … and there was no way to prepare me for that scene. It was definitely a shock on my first tour to have people who knew who I was and were blogging about me … there were definitely some growing pains with that.”
Juggling a busy touring schedule with school ultimately proved to be worth it, though. On tour, she Skyped in to her classes and, while the rest of the band went out to explore the cities they were in, Cressman stayed behind to do homework.
“I think that was a good dose of reality. Having some school work and responsibility and having to deal with the wrath of my teachers was a good, grounding thing. I’m so grateful that I got to do both,” she says.
Playing alongside veteran musicians like vocalist Jennifer Hartswick, and Nicholas Payton, Wycliffe Gordon, and Peter Apfelbaum was also a valuable education, according to Cressman — though the most important lessons often had little to do with music. One of those lessons, she says, is that “the work never stops.”
“The great thing about music is you’re always pushing for that next step, to be the best version of yourself. … It’s not based on any reward, just the self-motivation to be the best you can be,” she says.
Cressman’s latest album, 2014’s “Turn the Sea,” incorporates all of her musical influences, from jazz and Joni Mitchell to indie rock and Afrobeat. The album is driven by Cressman’s lyrics and vocals, a conscious departure from her first album, “Unfolding,” which was instrumental.
“I was really enamored with writing lyrics and using that as the jumping-off point for the rest of the song and the sound. It was a conscious decision, but the music poured out pretty organically, and it formed a pretty interesting narrative when all eight tracks were put together,” she says.
Natalie Cressman with her trombone in hand.
Cressman’s mother, Sandy, is a jazz vocalist with a background in Brazilian music, and so “Turn the Sea” has “a lot of that lilting melodic content … and harmonic richness,” Cressman says. The album was a chance to pull “from all the music I love and play in my day to day life,” she says.
Cressman approaches each song different. Sometimes the music or the grooves come first; other times, she starts with the lyrics. The title track on “Turn the Sea” was a lyrics-first song, she says.
“I had this idea about not being able to see what lies under the ocean as a metaphor to take risks in life. That concept came first, and then I was trying to write music that had the effect of waves crashing down on the beach and rushing at you,” she says. “I don’t have one set way to (write songs); starting from different places keeps me fresh and leads me to new conclusions.”
Cressman is at work on a new EP, which she says will “take into account some more post-production and electronic music elements.” She’s also working on a new album with Van Ghost, a band formed by fellow Anastasio bandmate Jennifer Hartswick, as well as making lots of guest appearances on the jam-band circuit and playing her own solo gigs.
Though her style is eclectic, Cressman’s roots are in jazz, a label she says carries some baggage when it comes to marketing music to audiences. “I really want my own music to be relevant to people in my generation, and I feel to a certain extent that jazz as a genre is not,” she says. Incorporating diverse influences into her music is a way to “keep some form of jazz alive, while being progressive and modern.” Mostly, she hopes listeners will leave a show with a new-found passion for a genre or artist or instrument they didn’t have before and, later, can’t imagine living without.
Natalie Cressman performs at The Press Room, 77 Daniel St., Portsmouth, on Sunday, June 7 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $7, available at pressroomnh.com.