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Theo Croker VibeZ

 WCLK Pick of The Week--Theo Croker/Afro Physicist

 

 

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 Instrumental Album. He wrote BLK2LIFE || A FUTURE PAST during the pandemic while holed up in his childhood home. His most recent full-length, Dream Manifest, came out on Dom Recs / Fat Beats and mixes jazz with experimental hip-hop and what he calls cosmic soul. Along the way he has worked with artists including Ari Lennox and Common, which explains why so many hip-hop and R&B heads already know his sound without knowing his name.

What to listen for

Listen to the restraint first. Croker almost never overplays. The trumpet often enters late, says one thing clearly, and gets out of the way of the groove. He uses the horn as much for texture as for melody. Listen to the rhythm section too. The drums move between boom-bap pocket, swing, and West African-derived percussion, sometimes within one track, and the trumpet floats over every one of them without changing its tone of voice. That consistency is the signature.

You can also hear the Miles Davis influence in the space between phrases, not as imitation. This year he has leaned into that openly with a Miles Davis Mixtape tribute for the Davis centenary, and he is working on a new album with Brazilian artists that he insists is not a jazz album. On the evidence here, that's less a departure than the next logical step.

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