Theo Croker blows up a quiet storm at Jazz Café

OK, maybe Theo Croker was playing at the Jazz Café; maybe he is described everywhere as an American jazz trumpeter; maybe he’s played with the likes of Dee Dee Bridgewater and Gary Bartz, and maybe he cites Dizzy Gillespie as one of his biggest influences. But jazz? Nope, he wants nothing more to do with it, explaining that musicians from Louis Armstrong to John Coltrane did not refer to their own music as jazz. “The label jazz has started to make my career more difficult,” he told the audience.

“Jazz is Dead” has been around so long that it’s even given its name to a recent series of albums by Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge on their Jazz Is Dead label. What Croker really means by it is that he doesn’t want his music to be pigeonholed, which is fair enough. In illustration, his set begins with a gentle flurry of electronic birdsong from DJ D’Leau, leading into the sweet and mellow 'Soul Call' played by Croker at the lower end of the trumpet’s range. His soft, flugelhorn-like tone has drawn comparisons with Roy Hargrove in the past. But you could tell from Michael Ode’s immense drum kit - including two bass drums - that we were in for a battering sooner or later, and so it proved, although generally the vibe was tuneful and atmospheric.

Most of the material was drawn from last year’s album BLK2life: A Future Past and the forthcoming A Love Quantum. Sometimes playing the trumpet, sometimes singing or rapping, Croker’s musical excursions were leisurely and trippy, as on ‘Where Will You Go’, which floated along on D’Leau’s otherworldly soundscapes. The tunes often consist of no more than a couple of simple chords, while Croker’s singing voice is as soft as his trumpet-playing, while keyboardist Michael King and bassist Eric Wheeler supply groovy support. (And don’t tell anyone, but on ‘Hero Stomp’ they even went into swing…)