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Alumni Profile: Steve Turre

Steve Turre

Trombonist Steve Turre—who has played with the likes of Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie and Herbie Hancock—was a student at Sacramento State when he first heard his idol J.J. Johnson perform live.

“It was like if a saxophone student heard Charlie Parker play (for the first time),” says Turre. “It was quite inspiring and humbling.”

Turre, now a 20-year member of The Saturday Night Live Band, has recorded 12 albums and appears on more than 200 recordings. Aside from playing the trombone, he has created a musical following by using the conch shell as an instrument, forming the critically acclaimed group Sanctified Shells.

He has consistently won both the readers’ and the critics’ polls in JazzTimes, Downbeat and Jazziz for Best Trombone and for Best Miscellaneous Instrumentalist on the shells.

Turre attended Sacramento State from 1966 to 1968. While here, he played with his salsa band, the Escovedo Brothers, and the University’s jazz ensemble, symphonic band and orchestra. Although he grew up with strong musical influences, he says his first college experience made him serious about his education and playing music professionally.

“I studied my behind off for the first time,” Turre says. “I realized I could do whatever I wanted if I applied myself.”

Turre got his big break in 1972 when Ray Charles hired him to go on tour. A year later Turre’s mentor, Woody Shaw, brought him into Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Turre went on to work with a diverse list of jazz, Latin and pop musicians, including Dizzy Gillespie, McCoy Tyner, J.J. Johnson, Herbie Hancock, Lester Bowie, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria, Van Morrison, Pharoah Sanders, Horace Silver, Max Roach and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Kirk introduced him to the distinct sound of the seashell.

Turre fondly remembers Sacramento State trombone instructor Norman J. Hunt, and he says professor Herbert Harrison had a great impact on his career by suggesting he go to a school where they had a jazz degree. “It takes a rare guy to encourage one of his better students to go somewhere else because they didn’t offer what I needed,” he says. “A person can really make a difference.”

Turre earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music.

A father of two, he lives in New York with his wife, cellist Akua Dixon. He is on the faculty at Manhattan School of Music and is a member of McCoy Tyner’s Big Band, the Latin Jazz All Stars and the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band.