Theon Cross has announced Affirmations: Live at Blue Note New York, a new live album arriving on July 11th through New Soil and Division 81. Recorded during his debut US headline show at the iconic Blue Note, the album captures Cross leading a transatlantic quartet featuring Chicago’s Isaiah Collier on sax, James Russell Sims on drums, and long-time London collaborator Nikos Ziarkas on guitar. Cross has been a key figure in London’s jazz resurgence for years, collaborating with the likes of Sons of Kemet, Steam Down, Nubya Garcia, Moses Boyd, Makaya McCraven, Jon Baptiste, and many more. The 12-track album draws heavily from previous releases, 2019’s Fyah and 2021’s Intra-I, and the 2022 single ‘Wings’, but nothing is played straight, everything is reworked in the moment, and stretched into new shapes by the energy in the room. Even his version of Aswad’s ‘Back to Africa’, originally the B-side to ‘Wings’, finds its way into the flow. Structured more like a DJ set than a traditional jazz performance, Affirmations moves with fluid energy, sitting in the lineage of live classics recorded at Blue Note but with a foot firmly planted in the present.

Ahead of the album’s release, Cross has shared the lead single, ‘Affirmations’, a 14-minute slow-build epic that stretches and contracts like a living thing. As Cross puts it, the track “speaks to the power of verbally and mentally affirming the things we wish to see for ourselves in our reality.” Listen to ‘Affirmations’ now.