Theo Croker
Videos
About
Theo Croker is a storyteller who speaks through his trumpet. A creative who refuses boundaries, the GRAMMY®️ Award-nominated artist, composer, producer, thought leader, and influencer projects his voice through the music. After seven years of sojourn in Shanghai, Croker crash-landed with a simmering original sound on the 2014 Dee Dee Bridgewater-assisted album Afro Physicist. Following the success of Escape Velocity in 2016, he ascended to a new stratosphere with Star People Nation in 2019. The record garnered a nomination in the category of “Best Contemporary Instrumental Album” at the 62nd GRAMMY®️ Awards. It attracted widespread critical acclaim including Stereogum, Paste, and The New York Times who called it “an album that gallivants from swirling, left-field hip-hop beats to propellant swing to entrancing passages of African percussion. Through it all, Croker’s understated trumpet playing holds his small band together with swagger and poise.” Along the way, he also lent his sound to platinum-selling albums by everyone from J. Cole to Ari Lennox while touring his band across the globe many times over. In 2020, he hunkered down at his childhood home in the midst of the global pandemic and wrote his sixth full-length album, releasing fall 2021 on SPN Records via Sony Music Masterworks.
Press
“Rarely do albums, jazz or otherwise, contain this level of care, individuality and progress and when ‘BLK2LIFE || A FUTURE PAST’ contains such immense volumes of all those qualities it is something to be continually celebrated and adored. Theo Croker has bestowed upon us his best work yet, but this is only the beginning of his phenomenal, intimate journey towards his zenith form.“
– Bedroom Frequencies, UK
“A riveting, fascinating experience, ‘BLK2LIFE // A FUTURE PAST’ is a gorgeous listen, one peppered with unexpected sonic detail. Theo Croker’s aural paintings have rarely been so developed, and so defined; jazz meets soul, future meets past, it’s a record that seems to conjure possibilities at every turn. A vital experience.”
– Clash, US
“Croker has been playing his instrument in the jazz tradition since he was 11…Yet he’s been headed towards its edges for a while now…”
– Afropunk
“Mixing acoustic jazz with contemporary production values often sounds forced. Croker, though, smooths out the joins to successfully unite unshackled modern jazz with club culture edge.”
– Financial Times, UK
“…contemporary textures which spring from the funk, soul and hip-hop branches of the jazz tree, rather than directly from the trunk.”
– Afropunk
“The scratchy vocals, sampled loops of Bobby Hutcherson vibes and doctored horns that open this album are grounded in a hip-hop aesthetic, and the blank-verse vocals that follow emerge from contemporary R&B. But the album’s heartbeat is the trumpeter’s razor-sharp acoustic quintet that spits beats and periodically bursts into life.”
– Financial Times, US
“Theo Croker blows up a quiet storm […] Seeking to break away from narrow definitions of jazz, the trumpeter showcased his personal blend of soulful and heavy grooves.”
– Jazzwise, US