Chris Crenshaw was born in Thomson, Georgia on December 20, 1982. Since birth, he has been driven by and surrounded by music. When he started playing piano at age three, his teachers and fellow students noticed his aptitude for the instrument. This 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, receiving honors and awards along the way, he graduated from Thomson High School in 2001 and received his Bachelor’s degree with honors in Jazz Performance from Valdosta State University in 2005. He was awarded Most Outstanding Student in the VSU Music Department and College of Arts. In 2007, Crenshaw received his Master’s degree in Jazz Studies from The Juilliard School, where his teachers included Dr. Douglas Farwell and Wycliffe Gordon. He has appeared as a sideman on fellow JLCO trumpeter 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.