Rising Star Jennifer Hartswick – Blowing Her Own Horn, and How!By K.C. Whiteley
Hartswick: it’s the perfect name for a woman whose musical career has grown out of the connections of the heart. An extraordinary trumpet player as well as a captivating vocalist and composer, Northeast Kingdom-born Jennifer Hartswick is a fast-rising star in the jazz and R&B worlds. Schooled in classical and jazz, with an equal comfort zone in R&B, soul, and funk, she covers the map.
For Hartswick, playing music is about the moment shared with her fellow musicians and the audience. “What I do has nothing to do with making albums,” she declares. “It’s all about the experience you have when it’s a live show, the experience we have onstage and the interaction with the audience, the experience they have watching. There’s nothing I enjoy more than that.” Possessed of bright eyes, a quick smile, and an easy laugh, the musician exudes a natural warmth and friendliness.
Hartswick takes an old chestnut like “My Funny Valentine” and breathes fresh life into what is all too often a stale rendition of a too-familiar melody. Originality and freshness are at the heart of every arrangement. “You Can’t Take That Away From Me,” “Summertime,” “Gee Baby, Ain’t I Good to You” all sound like you’re hearing them for the first time. She makes them her own.
Growing up in Sheffield, Vermont, may not seem the most likely launching pad for a trumpet-playing vocalist – unless you happen to have grown up in a family of women horn players who played brass quintets together. Or performed on stage from the age of two in the Vermont Children’s Theater, your parents’ successful arts organization. Or received your first trumpet at the age of ten, from the uncle who directed your elementary school’s instrumental program. By that time, Hartswick already played piano, clarinet, flute, and saxophone.
Hartswick explains, “My mom’s side of the family is all classical musicians. My Grandma was a trumpet player. I have so many horn-playing women in my life [but] I never thought it was strange. I have a tuba-playing, piano-playing aunt, a French-horn-playing aunt. My mom was the only woodwind player. So there was no choice. I didn’t know anything else.”
That may explain why it never occurred to Hartswick that being the only girl in the high school horn section might be considered unusual. The tide of destiny carried her from the instrumental program her uncle, Brian Huling, ran, to the influential tutelage of John Padden, musical director at Lyndon Institute. It was during these formative years that Hartswick developed her niche and love of jazz in the LI jazz band, known throughout Vermont for its unequaled prominence, winning best Vermont high school jazz band for a decade.
By the time Hartswick graduated from LI in 1998, she had already come to the attention of another Vermont-based musician, Trey Anastasio, who recruited her to play in his band. Hartswick says she discovered her voice in Anastasio’s band. Those early years of performing in children’s theater, always as someone else, had a downside: “I had no idea who I was or what was my own voice. With Trey, [I] found my voice and the stage persona that is really me. I struggled for a couple years to just be myself.”
After high school, Hartswick spent a year in Manhattan studying musical theater. That experience brought the realization that playing the trumpet, not theater, was her calling. She tried music school for another year and a half and discovered that was not the right match either.
She tells the story of quitting school and packing up her car to head home to Vermont. “About an hour later I got a call from Trey asking what I was doing. ‘Want to go on the road in two weeks?’ Sure!” she responded immediately. “Things kind of fall into place; it’s how I am in general. I try to remain open and go with my gut and let things happen. It’s hard because sometimes you’re really out on a limb and you don’t know what’s coming next and you don’t know what to do. Then something miraculous happens. It always does. It’s a matter of being open and great things happen. Nobody ever told me that I couldn’t. I have this incredible support system of people who said, ‘You can do whatever you want.’”
Hartswick’s career demands fairly constant travel. She shares this peripatetic lifestyle with her husband of four years who travels with a Chicago-based band. They work hard to arrange schedules that allow them time together. “We’re both really independent and our careers are important, so it works for us. The time we do spend together is very cherished. It’s so rare to find someone who truly understands what your life is like as a musician.”
Her biggest challenge recently has been a move to Chicago, leaving behind the love and support of lifelong family and friends. “You have to start over. You have to find that real connection with other musicians; otherwise it’s just a gig. And why would you do that? So it’s introductions and who do you know and then you play with maybe twenty people before you find one person that you go, whoo, I really love the way that we interact and play together and hang together. So it’s about starting over.”
To stay grounded with such a rambling lifestyle, Hartswick maintains close connections with family and friends back in the Kingdom. “This is where I come from. This will always be home.” Hartswick speaks of the special way Vermont musicians support each other, and the “incredible pool of people in Vermont who are in the music business for the right reasons. Wonderful people. I don’t know what it is about Vermont. It’s a different thing than anywhere else I’ve been.” When she’s home, Hartswick picks right up with her old friends for gigs.
Currently working on a new album with home team favorites Nick Cassarino and Joe Davidian, she talks about a recording session they did in Chicago. They were so glad to see each other that they hung out till the wee hours. “We just want to be around each other. It went incredibly well and we got it done so much faster than we ever thought possible. The recording engineers were astonished. That’s what happens when we all get together because we like each other so much. It makes playing only fun and no work. We’ve done the work in rehearsal. When it’s time to play, it’s time to play.” And, she adds, “All we can do is let people in on a little bit of our joy.”
Hartswick’s recent album, True, developed from a fundraising effort to support her aunt, who was fighting breast cancer (a battle subsequently lost). Hartswick called on her friends to make a record. “Trey donated the studio and paid for an engineer. All the musicians” – Joe Davidian, Nick Cassarino, John Rivers, Geza Carr, and Andrew Breskin – “donated their time. We recorded an album in two days, all live, no overdubs, no nothing. Mixed it the next day and I pressed a hundred or so copies on my little laptop. So we made some more money with these.
“Then Trey got his hands on it and said, ‘This is really beautiful. We have to put this out.’ His record label took it and remixed and mastered it and it’s available now. It’s a bittersweet album, certainly. She was the French horn player. She was a hell of a lady.” True echoes Hartswick’s jazz roots and includes familiar and less familiar jazz as well as her original, the beautiful “You Own Me.”
Hartswick cares about creating opportunities for young women. She donates her time in school music programs whenever she’s in Vermont. “I try to go into a school or two, and just be a good influence for young girls who are in fifth and sixth grade and going through that whole awkward period, and just show them that nothing can stand in their way and that it doesn’t matter what the boys think – just do your thing. I try to do it as often as I can.” Local sax legend Dave Grippo arranges sessions at his alma mater, South Burlington Middle School, so Hartswick can spend time as a teacher and role model for the girls there.
“It’s got to start there. It’s so important to start [with the] really young, being really positive and telling them they can do anything they want. It often takes just one person to make a difference, and it’s so important and takes so little time. Just go do it.”
Her advice to young girls: “Follow the vision, listen to yourself, make it happen!”
K.C. Whiteley lives in Montpelier. If you have a favorite Vermont woman musician who you feel deserves special mention, email K.C. at: kc.whiteley@yahoo.com. |
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