Mercedes-Benz JAZZ MASTER SERIES

 

THEO CROKER is an American jazz trumpeter, composer, arranger and vocalist. Born in Leesburg, Florida, Croker is a three-time Echo Award nominee, as well as a Theodore Presser Award recipient. Croker has released five studio albums —Fundamentals (2006), In the Tradition (2009), Afro Physicist (2014), Escape Velocity (2016) and Star People Nation (2019). He has also been featured on J. Cole’s 4 Your Eyez Only (2016) and Common’s Black America Again (2016) and Ari Lennox's debut album Shea Butter Baby (2019).

 

 

Croker was born July 18, 1985, he is a jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader from Leesburg, Florida. Theo is the second son of William Henry Croker, a civil rights activist, high school principal and farmer, and Alicia Cheatham, a guidance counselor, and the grandson of Grammy Award-winning trumpeter Doc Cheatham. Croker is a graduate of the Oberlin College Conservatory.

 

In 2013 Croker returned to the United States after a seven-year stay in Shanghai, China, where he broadened his concept of jazz to encompass other complementary genres such as salsa, fusion-rock, R&B, hip-hop and blues. While in Shanghai, he held a five-month residency at Shanghai's House of Blues. Soon after that he was hired as the house band for Asia Uncut Star Network, a late-night television show modeled on the Tonight Show–where Theo served as music director, bandleader and in-house composer until mid-2010.

 

 

That same year Croker met and performed for the first time with vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater. Over the next two years, Bridgewater and Croker kept in touch, exchanging musical ideas. In July 2010 Croker became the first artist in residence at Shanghai's Peace Hotel Jazz Bar, the oldest and longest-running music club in China. Both the Jazz Bar and the hotel, now the Fairmont Peace Hotel, date back to the 1920s when it was known as the Cathay Hotel.

 

On March 1 the first single off of the Star People Nation album was released, which paid homage to legendary Jazz musician Elvin Jones, titled "The Messenger" featuring guest pianist ELEW. Croker states in an article from Earmilk, “How we swing our quarter note is the basis of all black music. It’s the beat, and this song was made to reflect the power in that swing.”