About Theo Croker
Theodore Lee Croker is an American jazz trumpeter, composer, producer and vocalist. He is a Grammy Award nominee, three-time Echo Award nominee, as well as a Theodore Presser Award recipient.
Croker has released seven studio albums — Fundamentals , In the Tradition , Afro Physicist , Escape Velocity , Star People Nation , Blk2Life/A Future Past and Love Quantum . He has also been featured on J. Cole's 4 Your Eyez Only and Common's Black America Again and Ari Lennox's debut album, Shea Butter Baby .
Croker was born July 18, 1985, in Leesburg, Florida, and is the second son of William Henry Croker, a civil rights activist, high school principal, and farmer, and Alicia Cheatham, a guidance counselor, and daughter of Grammy Award-winning trumpeter Doc Cheatham. Croker began playing trumpet at age 11, inspired by his grandfather. By his teens, he was studying music at the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville.
Croker attended the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he graduated with a degree in jazz studies. While there, he was mentored by trumpeter and educator Donald Byrd.
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 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 he served as music director, bandleader and in-house composer until mid-2010.
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.
Map & Directions To Venue
