Album info
Album-Release:
2025
HRA-Release:
31.10.2025
Album including Album cover Booklet (PDF)
- 1 A Prayer for Peace 02:54
- 2 First Light 03:02
- 3 We Laugh Because We Must 02:01
- 4 Midnight Bloom 01:24
- 5 The Space Within 02:05
- 6 Let the Quiet Speak 01:57
- 7 Open Palms 03:43
- 8 Light Remains 05:53
- 9 Beneath the Noise 03:18
- 10 Mouth Full of Sky 03:25
- 11 Grace Is Not Gentle 01:55
- 12 As We Are 05:10
- 13 Then We Danced 03:47
- 14 Here and Now 02:50
Info for PLAY
The album PLAY brings together for the first time two of the most important American musicians of the current generation, forging new paths in jazz and far beyond: trumpeter Theo Croker and pianist Sullivan Fortner.
The two have known each other for more than 20 years, but PLAY is their first recording together as leaders. Their original idea was to record a collection of modern jazz standards, perhaps with a few versions of popular songs. So Croker and Fortner went into the studio, made a recording... and then rejected it. In its entirety. Theo Croker remembers: "When we played it back, it felt very dated. Not in the sense that the songs weren't good. But it felt like we were just playing things that had been recorded many times before." Sullivan Fortner agrees: "We felt like we weren't really ourselves; it felt more like school. We had both played a lot of music from the great American songbook in the past." These are great songs we explored. But it wasn't necessarily the music we gravitated to when performing. We're always rooted in something beyond jazz. The music we make always reflects the entire diaspora of Black American music, not just a specific genre.
So Croker and Fortner went back into the studio... the very next day. The plan this time: no plan. No compositions (except for the opener, "A Prayer for Peace"). Let's just PLAY. Theo Croker takes up the story: "We just had spontaneous little ideas: We're going to play this song fast. For this song, we're going to take four notes that we DON'T want to play. On this song, I'm going to play long notes, you're going to play fast notes. I'm going to come up with a melody, and we'll just see where it goes. We were done in just an hour." The process may sound simple in theory, but in reality, it contains the essence of two lifetimes of learning and improvisation. Sullivan Fortner says, "It just felt right, it felt like: This is really us. It inspired and spiritually attracted us and brought out a lot of things we've learned together and collectively."
This extraordinary recording, now released on ACT, has an interesting backstory: Theo Croker had already appeared on several previous ACT releases: first on Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic XII - Sketches of Miles (recorded in 2021) and then on Emile Parisien's transatlantic project Louise (2022), first in the studio and then live. ACT Managing Director Andreas Brandis then suggested the trumpeter release a more acoustic, chamber music-influenced album—something quite different from his work as a leader, which tends to straddle the boundaries between jazz, hip-hop, and pop. Croker's first instinctive reaction to the suggestion was positive, and he offered a duo recording with Sullivan Fortner—an idea the two musicians had been considering for a long time.
PLAY is one of those unusual opportunities where everything just happened. In today's music business, that's not just rare, it's a miracle. No rulebook, no questions about genres, no target audience...or singles...or streaming suitability. Just the music. Even though the most diverse influences converge here, the album has a particularly emblematic and vibrant statement about the spirit of jazz: freedom, interaction, the opportunity to express oneself and communicate with one another without restriction. Or, as Sullivan Fortner puts it: 'This is just two brothers playing.'
Theo Croker, trumpet
Sullivan Fortner, piano
Theo Croker
(born July 18, 1985 in Leesburg, Florida) is an American jazz musician.
Theo Croker is a storyteller who speaks through his trumpet. A GRAMMY Award-nominated artist, composer, producer, thought leader, and influencer, he is a creative who rejects boundaries and lets his voice ring through the music.
After seven years living in Shanghai, Croker's seething original sound crash-landed on 2014's Dee Dee Bridgewater-assisted album "Afro Physicist." Following the success of 2016's "Escape Velocity," he soared into a new stratosphere in 2019 with "Star People Nation." The album received a nomination in the "Best Contemporary Instrumental Album'' category at the 62nd GRAMMY Awards. The New York Times called it "an album that ranges from swirling hip-hop beats to driving swing to ravishing passages of African percussion."
Through it all, Croker's unobtrusive trumpet playing holds his small band together with verve and poise. Along the way, he's also lent his sound to platinum-selling albums from J. Cole to Ari Lennox and toured the globe many times with his band. In 2020, amid the global pandemic, he retreated to his childhood home and wrote his sixth full-length album, "BLK2LIFE || A FUTURE PAST" [Sony Music Masterworks].
BLK2LIFE || A FUTURE PAST is a contemporary oratorio inspired by the forgotten hero's journey through the universal origins of being black. On the album, Theo unpacks moments of heroism, trials, suffering, awakening and apotheosis in a musical pastiche brought to life by a host of other cultural renegades and held together by his playing. Traditions of the past, foundations of the present and explorations of the future. A sonic celebration & reclamation of Afro origins.
Sullivan Fortner
For more than a decade, Sullivan Fortner has been stretching deep-rooted talents as a pianist, composer, band leader and uncompromising individualist. The GRAMMY Award-winning artist and educator out of New Orleans received international praise as both key player and producer for his collaborative work on The Window, alongside Cecile McLorin Salvant, and earned a 2023 GRAMMY nomination for his provocative arrangement of “Optimistic Voices/No Love Dying” from her 2022 release Ghost Song.
As a solo leader he has issued Aria (2015), Moments Preserved (2018) and Solo Game (2024) to critical acclaim, the lattermost receiving 4-star reviews in DownBeat and France’s Telerama Magazine. Slated for release in 2025, his forthcoming trio recording Southern Nights features Peter Washington and Marcus Gilmore.
Winner of the 2024 DownBeat Critics Poll for Rising Star Jazz Group: Sullivan Fortner Trio, the prolific artist has enjoyed creative associations with Wynton Marsalis, Paul Simon, Diane Reeves, Etienne Charles and John Scofield; his frequent and longtime collaborators have included Ambrose Akinmusire, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Stefon Harris, Kassa Overall, Tivon Pennicott, Peter Bernstein, Nicholas Payton, Billy Hart, Gary Bartz, Chief Adjuah and the late Roy Hargrove.
Playing solo or leading an orchestra, Fortner engages harmony and rhythmic ideas through curiosity and clarity. Coming up in New Orleans, he began playing piano at age 7, earning his Bachelor of Music from Oberlin Conservatory and Master of Music in Jazz Performance from Manhattan School of Music (MSM). A champion of mentorship, Fortner has offered masterclasses at MSM, New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA), Purdue University, Lafayette Summer Music Workshop, Belmont University and Oberlin Conservatory where he held a faculty position and subsequently returned as visiting professor of jazz piano.
A highly-sought improviser, Fortner has performed at Snug Harbor, New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, Sweet Lorraine’s and The Jazz Playhouse in New Orleans, and Jazz at Lincoln Center, Jazz Standard and Smalls Jazz Club in New York City. He’s appeared at Newport, Monterey, Discover, Tri-C and Gillmore Keyboard jazz festivals. In 2019, Fortner brought his band to the historic Village Vanguard for a week-long engagement he would reprise in 2020 as a virtual performance during lockdown. His notable studio contributions include work on Etienne Charles’s Kaiso (Culture Shock, 2011), Donald Harrison’s Quantum Leap (FOMP, 2010), and Theo Croker’s The Fundamentals (Left Sided Music, 2007).
Booklet for PLAY