JAZZ@theEDGE FESTIVAL

Theo Croker Sessions
ELEW (piano)
JONATHAN BARBER (drums)
GIULIO XAVIER (bass)
BRAXTON COOK (sax)  (Friday-Sunday only)
THEO CROKER (Host+Trumpet)

Seating times: 6:00pm, 8:00pm, & 10:00pm

Theo Croker is a storyteller who speaks through his trumpet. A creative who refuses boundaries, the GRAMMY® Award-nominated artist, composer, producer, thought leader, and influencer who projects his voice through the music.

After seven years of sojourn in Shanghai, Croker crash-landed with a simmering original sound on the 2014 Dee Dee Bridgewater-assisted album Afro Physicist. Following the success of Escape Velocity in 2016, he ascended to a new stratosphere with Star People Nation in 2019. The record garnered a nomination in the category of “Best Contemporary Instrumental Album” at the 62nd GRAMMY® Awards. It attracted widespread critical acclaim including Stereogum, Paste, and The New York Times who called it “an album that gallivants from swirling, left-field hip-hop beats to propellant swing to entrancing passages of African percussion. Through it all, Croker’s understated trumpet playing holds his small band together with swagger and poise.”

Along the way, he also lent his sound to platinum-selling albums by everyone from J. Cole to Ari Lennox while touring his band across the globemany times over.

In 2020, he hunkered down at his childhood home in the midst of the global pandemicand wrote his sixth full-length album, releasing fall 2021 [Sony Music Masterworks].

BRAXTON COOK

Braxton Cook is an Emmy Award Winning Artist and one of this generation’s most exciting emerging voices in the Jazz world. Not only does he exhibit world-class virtuosity on the alto saxophone, but he is also a uniquely talented vocalist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and composer whose sound blends Jazz, Soul, and Alternative R&B into a fresh new sound all his own.  Braxton has played with Christian Scott Atunde Adjuah, Christian McBride, Jon Batiste, and many others.

After releasing his debut EP and a highly acclaimed project “Braxton Cook Meets Butcher Brown”, Braxton released his debut album “Somewhere In Between”. It has amassed millions of streams and downloads on Spotify and Apple Music and has garnered praise by musicians, listeners and critics alike:  “the album demonstrates unmatched flexibility by merging multiple genres into an ardent, passionate and soul-filled project.”  Ebony Magazine listed Braxton as “Top 5 Jazz Artists to Watch” alongside Robert Glasper, Kamasi Washington Butcher Brown and Kris Bowers.  Other critics have called Braxton a “jazz marvel” and “jazz prodigy”.  Braxton released his second album “No Doubt” in late 2018, which debuted at #2 on iTunes Jazz Charts and has amassed more than 6M streams on Spotify.  During the pandemic he released “Fire Sign” which attracted more than 1M streams in the first weeks.

He’s performed with Rihanna, Solange Knowles, Phony Ppl, and with Tom Misch at Coachella.  He appeared with Quincy Jones at The Shed and has performed at the North Sea Jazz Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival, at the venerable Ronnie Scotts in London, and at other festivals and venues all over the world.

Braxton Cook is a jazz artist on the move.

ELEW

Eric Lewis “ELEW”, a high energy pianist, has toured, recorded and performed with music legends including Jon Batiste, Cassandra Wilson, Elvin Jones, Roy Hargrove, and many others.  He has performed and recorded with Wynton Marsalis & the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.