By all measures, Theo Croker is a jazz artist. The 39-year-old trumpeter/composer has been a Grammy nominee within the jazz fields; he performed all the good jazz venues all over the world; he was mentored by Donald Byrd on the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the place he graduated with a level in jazz music; and Dee Dee Bridgewater produced his third album, “Afro Physicist,” which options fellow trumpeter Roy Hargrove.
Sure, for those who should categorize his music, then Croker is a real jazz artist. Nonetheless, as a citizen of the world who lived and labored seven years in China and now splits his time between Orlando, Florida and Sao Paulo, Brazil, Croker has a really completely different definition of jazz than the usual American interpretation.
“Jazz, or the music I make, is much more open-minded, because the other places I go and spend a lot of time and play music, jazz is a very broad term and generally just means Black music,” he tells The Occasions. “Like in China, to them, jazz is Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Miles Davis, Coltrane, all of that is jazz to them. It’s not as constricted of a definition as it tends to be in America where it’s like, ‘Oh, if it’s not purist, it’s not jazz.’ But I don’t have those issues in other places. People are just open-minded to it.”
It’s that eclecticism and adventurous spirit that propels Croker’s glorious upcoming “Dream Manifest” album, due June 13. For his eighth album, Croker let the complete scope of his creativeness wander. “This album is a fantasy album. I’m manifesting my dreams. It’s like you’re reading my dream journal,” he says. “This is me putting myself inside of a fantasy and really trying to let go of any type of boundaries or borders that constrict my creativity.”
“Jazz, or the music I make, is much more open-minded because the other places I go and spend a lot of time and play music, jazz is a very broad term and generally just means Black music,” Crocker stated.
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Unbound by any musical shackles, Croker explores an unlimited terrain on “Dream Manifest.” The attractive, elegant opener, “Prelude 3,” would match comfortably on any jazz playlist of the Fifties or Nineteen Sixties. It’s a piece of timeless magnificence that leads into the ambient, modern love tune “One Pillow,” that includes Estelle and Kassa General. One other standout is “Light as a Feather,” with Gary Bartz and Natureboy Flako. That includes superior musicianship blended with a rhythmic, hypnotic beat, the tune is an ideal melding of worlds. He returns to a barely extra conventional sound on the instrumental “Crystal Waters,” a tune that conjures reminiscences of Chuck Mangione and fantastically evokes his Brazilian model on the 7 ½-minute “We Still Wanna Dance,” that includes D’leau.
Although there’s a variety of musical gentle and pleasure inside these songs, Croker says that, to him, the document, like all his favourite albums, from the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Gato Barbieri, Dizzy Gillespie, is about battling demons. “I lean into the darkness of myself. I like to face the darker aspects of what I find in a dream when I find dark things in my psyche and dream world,” he says. “I push and ask questions, and I go deeper into them.”
What demons is he battling on “Dream Manifest”? “I’m always battling the ego as any true creative is doing. Not the ego in the sense of, ‘I think I’m great.’ More the sense of, ‘I don’t need to go along with everybody else. I don’t need to make music the way everybody else does. I’m not making music to be popular. I’m not making music to fit a playlist. I’m not making music to make the label happy,’” he explains. “More so about making music that truly lets me explore my darker side; the angst that I grew up with, my own issues with my parents, everybody has them, and my upbringing and things I’ve had to unlearn; the issues that I see going on in the world; how people treat people, how governments treat people, how societies treat people.”
To discover these themes — his goals, his demons and his creativity — on this document, he allowed himself to discover the thoughts. “I probably was on mushrooms the entire time I made this album because it made me vulnerable. Any time I’m on any type of mushroom or something like that I’m completely honest with myself,” he says.
“I don’t need to make music the way everybody else does. I’m not making music to be popular. I’m not making music to fit a playlist. I’m not making music to make the label happy,” Croker explains.
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That honesty is crucial, nonetheless he will get there. As a result of as he realized on his international adventures, audiences need to really feel he’s there with them and utterly current. “What I find is everywhere I go and play, especially the further away from America I am, they want to experience something in the moment. In that moment, it’s not about the social media aspect of it, it’s not about the popularity of it, they want to experience something, and people know when you’re being genuine on the stage,” he says.
Croker turns 40 this 12 months and, in his case, it’s true with age comes knowledge. A substantial amount of that knowledge is studying, that in music, as is true with most every little thing in life, much less is extra. As he has realized, simply because you possibly can exhibit doesn’t imply it’s essential.
“There’s a tendency for musicians, when they’re younger, and creatives to create for other creatives,” he explains. “I’m at a point where the music I create, I want to pull in the listener. And I want the listener to get lost in it and explore something. I’m not doing that to impress them musically or even using technique to do that. … Those things have become very important to me musically, more so than taking a solo. And playing as beautifully as possible. That’s where I’m at in my career as a performer for sure.”
