Theo Croker plays trumpet the way a good DJ plays records: he's always listening to what's underneath. [XX] tracks of a player who treats jazz as a living frequency, something to tune into rather than a museum to curate. The trumpeter who learned the lineage and then left the building Croker's credentials are almost too perfect. He took up the trumpet inspired by his grandfather, the Grammy-winning jazz trumpeter Doc Cheatham , then studied at Oberlin Conservatory under the mentorship of Donald Byrd . Most musicians with that pedigree spend their careers defending the tradition. Croker went to China instead. He spent seven years between Shanghai and New York, and his major-label debut AfroPhysicist , produced with Dee Dee Bridgewater , grew out of the collaborations from that period. From there the records kept getting more open. Escape Velocity followed in 2016, then Star People Nation in 2019, which earned a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary In...