Glasgow Jazz Festival
Theo Croker
St Luke’s
Rob Adams
five stars
IF THEO Croker thinks jazz is a dying art form, he should listen to his band. The trumpeter made this pessimistic observation, perhaps with tongue in cheek, one number into a gig that must have been akin to what journalist-turned-manager Jon Landau heard in Bruce Springsteen before making his famous “the future” statement.
It might be placing an unfair burden to confer similar status on Croker & Co but they justified it here.
This was a prime example of learning from the past and taking the lessons forward, an utterly invigorating and life-affirming performance from musicians who individually had the power to enthral and collectively the talent to captivate.
In Michael King, Croker has a pianist of breath-taking skill. His every contribution was immense: improvisations that combined conservatoire-level chops with mastery of jazz language and inventiveness; accompaniments full of drive, ideas and variety. And the sense he gave that every number should be a gripping adventure, at the very least, permeated the quintet.
Croker himself is a multi-faceted player, now coolly considered, now playing on the edge of his emotions, and his frontline partner, Anthony Ware added a big tenor saxophone personality and the ability to form rhythmical phrases consistently into a cogent, fascinating narrative.
With bassist Ameen Saleem and drummer Francesco Ciniglio joining King in adding muscle, crisply-executed intricacy, sensitivity and sheer fizz to make Joe Henderson’s A Shade of Jade swing improbably hard, fast and excitingly and allow Croker’s feature of My Funny Valentine to sing a very personal blues, this was a night that people will look back on and say, “I was there” – possibly whether they were there or not!
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here