About Greg
"impossibly talented"
— B.A. Nilsson, The Syncopated Times
“Infectiously energetic and inventive” (The Wee Review Arts & Culture, Scotland), Hammontree is a musician and sound artist whose work is both coolly understated and unapologetically rebellious all at once. Based in New York, his extensive credits span The Blue Note NYC, Festspielhaus St. Pölten (Austria), Radio City Music Hall, Bing Concert Hall (Stanford), The Kaufman Center (Kansas City), and Konzerthaus Berlin (Germany).
Embracing the nuanced, the unexpected, and the deeply individual, his music resists easy categorization, thriving in the spaces where genres, disciplines, and ideas intersect.Hammontree's deep listening project Trumpet: Echoes combines live-processed solo trumpet with a spatialized audio installation, premiering at Socrates Sculpture Park’s 2022 New Agora Jazz Festival. Audience members navigated an evolving landscape of echoing jazz harmonies as they moved through the tree grove. His duo project Impressions, with pianist/composer Nicole Brancato, reimagines classical music’s Impressionism with modal jazz’s improvisational freedoms, and was featured at the 2024 Lunigiana International Music Festival (Italy).A core member of The Queen’s Cartoonists, Hammontree combines theater and foley arts in his multi-instrumental performance (trumpet, trombone, and tuba), which pairs historic but underperformed works from the jazz tradition with projects from the golden age of animation as well as new animation commissions. The Queen's Cartoonists ensemble has opened for the New York Philharmonic and has performed in 42 states and Europe, including Porgy and Bess Jazz (Vienna, Austria), Birmingham Town Hall (UK), SF Jazz, Teatro Tivoli (Lisbon, Portugal), and Jack Singer Concert Hall (Calgary, Canada).As a composer, Hammontree’s work includes collaborations with artists like Jason Trachtenburg (Late Night with Conan O'Brien & MTV), as well as new work awards from the NYFA (2020, 2022, 2024), Flushing Town Hall (2024), and the NYC City Artist Corps (2021). On screen, his music and performances have been featured on Netflix, CBS, HBO, RAI, PBS, BBC3, ABC, and NPR.A sought after teaching artist and presenter, Hammontree has delivered sessions at over 50 universities across the country, including Texas A&M University, University of Illinois, and SUNY Purchase. He is a voting member of the Recording Academy (GRAMMYS).
For Greg's press kit, please click here.
Listen
Grant wins:
New York Foundation for the Arts (2024)
Flushing Town Hall (2024)
Queens Council on the Arts (2022)
Trumpet: Echoes is a meditative sound project created for deep listening.Weaving together layers of sound — from acoustic sources to field recordings, electronic instruments, and live audio processing — the project folds together layers of sound into a musical tapestry that echoes the people, places, and ponderings in the larger world around it.
For sale in person at J. Landress Brass NYC
Winner of the Queens Council on the Arts New Work Grant 2020
#4 on Billboard's Classical Crossover Albums
"Truly a spectacle."
— All Things Considered, NPR"Most impressive is Hammontree’s performance."
— Mashable
Inspired by the challenge of writing an album of monophonic works, Greg composed this series of short character pieces. Each can be thought of as a single idea or "note to self". Although each piece addresses a technical aspect of trumpet playing, they feel more like a whimsical sketch or impromptu train of thought.
Watch
Trumpet: Echoes is Greg Hammontree’s ambient rendering of brass as architecture — a sculptural unfolding of sound, reimagining jazz in a modern world. Trumpet: Echoes premiered at Socrates Sculpture Park's New Agora Jazz Festival in 2022, which had speakers embedded throughout the park's Grove of Trees. Audiences were invited to wander through the grove as the composition unfolded around them — or alternatively, to lay under the canopy of trees, listening with eyes closed.
Teaming up with beatmaker Chris Aiello, this project 'EFN Music' is built from trumpet and samplers, woven together with a tapestry of site-specific voice samples.
"Clock" from the album, Note to Self. This solo trumpet piece is about how our perception of time changes as we grow older. Video by Michael Landau
In a concert that's equally elegant, electric, and explorative, husband-wife duo Greg Hammontree (jazz trumpet) and Nicole Brancato (classical piano) take timeless pieces of Jazz and Classical music in transcendent new directions in Impressions. Featured at the Lunigiana International Music Festival (2024), Columbia University, and the Seven Hills Chamber Music Festival (2024).
Thank You
Looking forward to saying hello!