Theo Croker on the 15th of August at Nisville!

03 Apr Theo Croker on the 15th of August at Nisville!

Cosmic jazz fusion at the Niš Fortress

The famous American trumpeter Theo Croker will perform with his band at the opening of the main program of the upcoming jubilee, 30th Nishville Jazz Festival on Thursday, 15th of August, on the plateau of the Nis Fortress. Theo Crocker is an adventurous jazz musician known for his cosmic minded and spiritually  enlightened interpretation of post-bop, funk and electronic fusion. So far has released 10 albums.

Born in 1985 in Leesburg, Florida, Crocker began playing the trumpet at age 11, inspired by his grandfather, famous trumpeter Doc Cheatham. In his teenage years he studied music at the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville.

From 2003 to 2007, Crocker attended the Conservatory of Music at Oberlin College, and his mentor was the legendary trumpeter and educator Donald Byrd, who performed at the Nishville Jazz Festival in 2007. During that period he won the Presser Music Foundation Award, which accelerated the release  of his debut album “Fundamentals” in 2006. After graduating from Oberlin, Crocker moved to China, where he regularly performed as a resident in “Shanghai House blues”,  the oldest and most famous Chinese jazz club.

His 2009 album”In the Tradition” was recorded in honor of his grandfather Cheatham and he picked it up praises and critics of the audiences. Probably the key albums for the development of Theo Crocker’s career are “Afro Physicist” in produced by Dee Dee Bridgewater from 2014 and “Escape Velociti” from 2016. On the team releases, it is noticeable how Crocker stylistically expands using elements of funk, Latin jazz and hip-hop into his distinctive, spiritually enlightened jazz sound.

In the last five years, Crocker he accepted a contemporary R&B and space-funk sound on “Star People Nation” from 2019, when he was nominated for the prestigious Grammy award. Even more genre R&B and electronic textures were marked by the expansive albums “Blk2Life/A Future Past” in 2021 and “Love Quantum” from 2022, which  exude virtuoso passages and unmistakable relaxation, additionally showing the trumpeter’s genre-bending take on musical Afrofuturism.