Steve Swell, born in Newark, NJ has been an active member of the New York music community since 1975.  He has toured and performed with such diverse jazz personalities as mainstreamers Lionel Hampton and Buddy Rich to so called outsiders Anthony Braxton, William Parker and Jemeel Moondoc.  He has recorded 25 CDs as a leader or co-leader and is a featured artist on more than 80 other releases.

Steve was nominated by the Jazz Journalists Association for Trombonist of the Year, 2008.

“Steve is unquestionably a trombone player; he attacks and exploits the instrument’s peculiarities as a race car driver would a Ferrari. No wind-blown instrument is more capable of tonal extremes than the trombone, a fact that Swell makes manifest with his howling glissandi and chattering chromaticism, to say nothing of a post bop linearity that would make J.J. Johnson proud. Swell has an extraordinary conventional technique which he puts to quite unconventional use, spiced liberally with an assortment of his own very personal idiosyncrasies.”

                                               Jazz Now Magazine--April, 1995