Nick Mesler

Nick Mesler is a jazz trombonist, composer, and arranger based in New York City, with a playing and writing style rooted in the big-band tradition and in the music of Duke Ellington. He grew up in Seattle and moved to New York in 2021 to study jazz trombone at the Juilliard School, enrolling in its five-year combined bachelor's and master's program in jazz studies. He transcribed and arranged more than a dozen Ellington compositions and arrangements for the Juilliard Jazz Orchestra, in which he also plays trombone. He leads his own big band, which premiered his first long-form suite, Alone in the Dark. In May 2025 he led a quartet at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem for a program devoted to trombonist Lawrence Brown, performing on Brown's 1950 King Liberty 2B horn.