The multi-instrumentalist and his Orleans Avenue band brought a jazzy Mardi Gras atmosphere to a packed Meijer Gardens venue for a high-energy Sunday of favorites. The Local Spins review and photos.
Bringing Funk, Jazz and More: Trombone Shorty at Meijer Gardens. (Photo/Anthony Norkus)
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Learn the rules so you know how to break them. It’s a common refrain for artists, and particularly apt for a complex art form such as jazz.
Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews learned the rules of his craft at an incredibly young age, empowering him to bend, blend and break the rules with stunning results.
Growing up in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans, Andrews showed an early passion and talent for music. Being from a musical family, a young Andrews studied and played with some of the best in the biz before he had even reached double digits.
All these years later, Andrews is an accomplished, well-respected multi-instrumentalist, with fans across the world and impressive gigs under his belt. (This year alone, he performed at Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans, took the stage for “A Capitol Fourth 2025” in Washington D.C. and was inducted into the inaugural class of the recently unveiled New Orleans Walk of Fame.)
Andrews has never lost the discipline that earned him his many accolades (just watch him hold a single note for an unnervingly long time and you’ll understand the athleticism and practice it takes to do what he does). But that doesn’t mean the trombonist/trumpeter/singer/author/actor/philanthropist doesn’t also know how to get a party started.
New Orleans Spectacle: The band brought the party to Grand Rapids on Sunday. (Photo/Anthony Norkus)
Andrews did just that for a full house Sunday evening at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, where he returned to an adoring, revved-up audience in what’s become an annual ritual as part of the venue’s popular summer concert series.
Backed by the always-phenomenal Orleans Avenue band, Andrews and company delivered an unrelenting 80-ish minutes of jazz/funk/rock. The familiar Meijer Gardens fixture offered his love for Grand Rapids and the venue that have been so welcoming to him over the last decade or so.
The band’s set was efficient, excellent and endlessly energetic, with live show mainstays such as “Here Come the Girls,” “Lifted,” “Something Beautiful,” closing number “Hurricane Season” and the NOLA classic, “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
Beloved New Orleans’ funk collective Dumpstaphunk kicked off the evening with 30 minutes of danceable jams and Crescent City vibes.
Florida swamp rockers JJ Grey & Mofro followed, treating the audience to an hour of good-natured, Southern rock highlighted by songs such as “Lochloosa” and “The Sun is Shining Down.”
Missed the show? Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue and JJ Grey & Mofro perform tonight (Monday, July 14) at Kresge Auditorium at Interlochen Center for the Arts. Tickets, starting at $37, are available online here.
Trombone Shorty also returns to Michigan on Nov. 21 to perform at Detroit’s Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts.
UP NEXT AT MEIJER GARDENS: O.A.R. performs at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday (July 16). The show is sold out. (Meijer Gardens’ Tuesday Evening Music Club series this week features marsfade and The Rebel Eves, starting at 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 15.)
PHOTO GALLERY: Trombone Shorty, JJ Grey & Mofro, Dumpstaphunk
Meijer Gardens
Photos by Anthony Norkus
