I wrote a bio for Theo's website about 4 years ago. Since then he has traveled and performed all over the world and cut two new albums. A few months ago he asked me to write a new bio for the liner notes of his next CD, which will be released sometime this summer.  This past Friday night I went to see his band, The Afrosonic Quintet, play at the Blue Note here in New York City. The show was scheduled for 12:30 AM but didn't start until after 1, way past my bedtime. But once these guys started playing I lost all sense of time.  If you ever have the opportunity, go see them play live. Meanwhile, here's a link to the last album, In The Tradition. 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/in-the-tradition/id304988955 

Jazzman Take My Blues Away

Theo Croker’s distinctive sound defies classification. His innate talent is a gift from his grandfather, the legendary Doc Cheatham, but his music is entirely his own. Cultivated from deep jazz roots that he nurtured with years of study and practice, it is a unique blend of jazz, hip-hop, R&B and pop influences. Theo’s newest project, entitled Afrosonic and produced by the celebrated singer Dee-Dee Bridgewater for her label DDB Records, is the result of Theo’s relentless search for originality.

Theo Croker was born on July 18, 1985, in the small town of Leesburg, Florida, the second son of William Henry Croker, a civil rights activist, high school principal and farmer, and Alicia Cheatham, a guidance counselor. As a young boy Theo loved to listen to his grandfather’s records, and when he was about ten years old he picked up his older brother’s horn and started to play. That same year his parents drove the boys to Sarasota to watch their grandfather play live at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, an experience that would shape Theo’s future. After that he would sit in his room for hours, learning new notes by listening to and playing along with his grandfather’s records. “He had a very appealing sound, the strength behind it was always a melody," Theo says. “I noticed that I could fit in with what I was hearing harmonically.” 

When his grandfather died in June 1997, Theo was invited to participate with Wynton Marsalis, Clark Terry, Warren Vache, Benny Powell, Al Grey, Jon Faddis, and countless others in a memorial concert at St. Peter’s Church in Midtown Manhattan. Wearing his grandfather’s trademark fedora, Theo sat in the old master’s chair and played On Broadway, mesmerizing the audience with his resemblance to his grandfather, both musical and physical. “I was only eleven years old, but the way the music touched people and the way it made me feel was enough to set me for life. I knew it was what I wanted to do.”

Two years later he joined veteran trombonists Al Grey and Benny Powell at the New Orleans Jazz Festival, where they asked him to sit in on a set in the Preservation Hall Jazz Tent. “Al Grey asked what song I wanted to play and I said C-Jam Blues. I didn't know how to improvise. I would usually just play the melody and that's it. After I played it Benny told me that I called the song so I had to solo, meaning improvise alone. I told him I didn’t know how to solo, and he said,  ‘Now you’re about to learn. Start playing.’ That was my first time soloing, on stage at the New Orleans jazz & Heritage festival. He showed me scales and chords to practice after that. Al Grey and Benny Powell really nurtured me after Doc died. They took a sincere interest in my development. I was just a kid.” 

At sixteen Theo left home to attend The Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville, Florida, where his talent and drive attracted attention both in school and with local audiences. After seeing one of Theo’s solo performances, the director of the Ritz Theatre, a former black movie house transformed into a museum with a performance space, commissioned him to compose music for and lead a seventeen-piece band, eventually becoming the theater’s first Artist In Residence. Meanwhile he stayed in contact with the musicians he’d met at Doc Cheatham’s memorial service five years earlier. Wynton Marsalis, who had been particularly moved by Theo’s performance there, invited him to study with him in New York over school breaks and encouraged him to move there after high school. Donald Byrd, the virtuoso jazz trumpeter and pioneer in jazz education, drew Theo to college in Ohio.

            The Oberlin College Conservatory’s jazz studies faculty includes active composers and performers like Donald Byrd, the renowned trumpet player and academic ethnomusicology pioneer. Gary Bartz, Robin Eubanks, Billy Hart, Wendell Logan, Marcus Belgrave, and Dan Wall, among many others, have taught there. Theo had first heard about the school when The Oberlin Jazz Septet performed at his high school during his junior year. “That’s when I got interested, cause they blew me away. Then my father took me to visit and we saw Dr. Donald Byrd in concert. He was a huge fan.” Bill Croker passed away in February 2004, but he did see his son’s first performance at Oberlin on October 20, 2003.

            When he began his conservatory studies in the fall of that year, Theo met pianist Sullivan Fortner and drummer Kassa Overall, musicians who shared his interests in musical experimentations. They quickly became close friends, and continue to perform together years after they graduated. Theo received the Presser Music Foundation Award in the spring of 2006 and used the proceeds to finance his debut album, The Fundamentals, for which he composed and arranged every song. Recorded over the summer over 2006, it features fellow Oberlin students Sullivan Fortner and bass player Chris Mees, and received wide critical acclaim.

            During spring break the previous year, Theo met Roy Hargrove at a jam session at Cleo’s in New York. Hargrove, impressed with the younger trumpeter’s abilities, invited him to his house the next day. “When he asked about the horn I was playing I told him it was on loan as I had recently broken my own beyond repair.” Hargrove let Theo try a few of his instruments, including a rare and expensive Martin Committee trumpet. “When I played the Martin he was like ‘yes, that one! Play that one.’ So a few months later I did and still do.”

            Theo booked his first international gig as a headliner at Shanghai’s House of Blues and Jazz, bringing the Theo Croker Quintet to play with him six nights a week from September 2007 through February 2008, when he returned to New York to record his second CD, In The Tradition. That album featured Tootie Heath on drums, Benny Powell on trombone, Sullivan Fortner on piano, and Joe Sanders on bass. After another stint freelancing in China Theo booked five shows at the Rubin Museum of Arts’ Harlem In The Himalayas series with Jimmy Cob, Winard Harper, Benny Powell, Billy Hart, and Wycilff Gordon.

            In the fall of 2008 Theo made Shanghai his base. He worked with various bands playing salsa, fusion/rock, and blues, in clubs all over China. In 2009 he formed the Theo Croker Sextet, with four other American musicians based in Shanghai. In November 2009 the quintet was hired as the house band for Asia Uncut Star Network, a late night TV show modeled on the Tonight Show, with Theo as bandleader and in-house composer.

            He stayed with Asia Uncut until April 2010. The following month Dee Dee Bridgewater, who had met Theo the previous year when he played in her band at the Shanghai Jazz Festival, came to China on a ten-day jazz education tour with Herbie Hancock. When the tour came to Shanghai, she invited Theo to her concert at the World Expo Entertainment Hall, and later that night joined him onstage at his gig at JZ Club. The next day she asked him to lunch to discuss possible future collaborations.

            Having recently launched her own label she was looking for a fresh act to sign. “She didn’t want another traditional jazz record, but something crossover or eclectic,” Theo remembers. He had just started the Afrosonic Orchestra project, an ever-changing collective of international musicians based in Shanghai. The group explores Afro- influenced music such as Hip-Hop, R&B, Afro-Beat, and Jazz.  “It’s a concept,” Theo explains, “not a genre. The goal is to blur the line between all genres with fresh interpretations, adaptations, and original compositions, in many ways it exemplifies the new vibrancy of 21st century popular music. The concept appealed to Ms. Bridgewater, who invited Theo Croker to be the first artist to sign with DDB Productions.

            Theo immediately started making demos, refining the Afrosonic concept. In July he met the singer China Moses, Dee Dee Bridgewater’s daughter at the Strasbourg Jass Festival in France. Ms. Moses joined the Afrosonic Orchestra at the JZ Jazz Festival in Shanghai that October, and again at the Blues to Bop Festival in Lugano, Switzerland in September 2011, where they appeared as the headliner. That performance marked the group’s European debut.

            Using original material primarily sourced from the Afrosonic Orchestra repertoire, Theo recorded the album Afrosonic at Avatar Studios in New York City on April 21-24, 2011. Produced by Ms. Bridgewater, the album features Dee Dee Bridgewater, Roy Hargrove and China Moses on vocals, Steffon Harris on vibes, Karriem Riggins on drums, Dave Gilmore on guitar, Sullivan Fortner on piano, and Michael Bowie on bass.     

            Theo marked another milestone in his career in July 2010 when he became the first Artist in Residence at Shanghai’s famous Peace Hotel Jazz Bar, the oldest and longest running music club in China. The Theo Croker Quintet played to a packed and enthusiastic crowd every Tuesday through Saturday night until his residency ended in April 2013. As one popular travel blogger wrote, “I have never been a big fan of jazz, but the Theo Croker Quartet just might have made a convert out of me. I would definitely enjoy spending another evening soaking up their cool vibes. These guys totally rock.”

            DDB Productions will release Afrophysicist, Theo’s third and most eclectic album, in the summer of 2013.