Tag Archives: Theon Cross

Theon Cross announces new live album, Affirmations: Live at Blue Note New York

12 June 2025

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.

Matthew Herbert previews upcoming album, The Horse, with lead single ‘The Horse Has A Voice’

15 March 2023

Photo: Eva Vermandel

Behold! British artist, producer, composer and experimentalist Matthew Herbert has announced the release of a new album. Entitled The Horse, the record is a collaboration with the London Contemporary Orchestra and saw Herbert enlist an incredible cast of guest contributors, including Sons of Kemet’s Shabaka Hutchings and Theon Cross, Evan Parker, regular Wayne Shorter collaborator Danilo Pérez, Polar Bear’s Seb Rochford and Kokoroko’s Edward Wakili-Hick. A search for the largest possible animal skeleton that could be explored sonically served as the origin for the album, which is based around a full-size horse skeleton. “One of the major narrative arcs through the album”, describes the press release, “is its representation of the evolution of human music itself, opening in a compelling, primitive flurry of custom-made flutes from the horse’s thigh bones and bows crafted from ribs and horse hair”.

The importance of the horse in human history became crucial for the album, and Herbert undertook recordings from various sources including 6900 horse sounds culled from the internet, reverb impulses in front of ancient cave paintings of horses in Northern Spain and sounds recorded at the corner of Epsom race course where women’s suffrage activist Emily Davison was trampled by King George V’s racehorse in 1913. Herbert has also used horse skin drums and a shaker shaped from a mixture of cement and polo horse semen. To help with creating or carving the instruments out of the skeleton, Herbert commissioned instrument makers Sam Underwood, Graham Dunning, Henry Dagg and Lee Patterson.

The Horse arrives on May 26th through Modern Recordings / BMG and to celebrate the release, Herbert has shared the triumphant and propulsive lead track, ‘The Horse Has A Voice’, featuring Theon Cross. We can’t control the impulse to play it again and again. Check it out below.

Listen to tyroneisaacstuart’s new single ‘Knees’ ft. Moses Boyd & Theon Cross

12 October 2022

tyroneisaacstuart seems to be a jack and master of all trades: saxophonist, rapper, dancer and producer – he does it all! This Autumn the London based multidisciplinary artist will release his debut album. Entitled S!CK, it is divided into three acts – GUMBO, Apology and Peace. According to the press release, the record “draws on the spirit of the traditional New Orleans dish to bring a mix of diasporic musical ingredients to tyroneisaacstuart’s work at the intersection of jazz, contemporary dance, and visual art.”

To bring S!CK to life, tyroneisaacstuart enlisted a cast of stellar collaborators including Moses Boyd, Theon Cross, Shirley Tetteh, Nikos Zarkias, Jamie Murray, Jack Polley, Reiss Ellis Beckles, Kwaku Aacht and Zuri Jarret-Boswell.

We’ll have to wait until November 11th for the album to be out through New Soil but we can now hear a transcending new cut from it called ‘Knees’, featuring Theon Cross on tuba pulse and Moses Boyd on drums. Speaking about the track, tyroneisaacstuart  comments:

”Knees means a lot to me because it was the first time I’d written a song using dance as a creative tool for songwriting. Some would know the quote/book “the body keeps the score”. I agree, it not only keeps the score which helps us tell the story. Our body is full of stories, and knees is a reminder be sensitive to that.”

‘Knees’ is offered with a sublime video, directed and co-choreographed by the man himself. Here it is.

Theon Cross shares video for new single ‘The Spiral’ feat. Afronaut Zu & Ahnansé

14 September 2021

Acclaimed tuba player and composer Theon Cross is gearing up to release a new album titled Intra-I, the follow-up to his 2019 debut Fyah. Cross, who’s a big player in London’s vibrant contemporary jazz scene, offers a whole array of sonic possibilities of his main instrument. Eschewing genre conventions, the upcoming album sees him blending “jazz, dub, hip-hop, soca, grime, and other sounds from the Afro-Caribbean diaspora”. Intra-I, which means ‘Within Self’, is described as “an exploratory and upful celebration of Afro-Diaspora Music” and it “features songs that examine self-development, the importance of history and heritage and the strength in adversity shown by the first generations of post-war Caribbean immigrants to the UK.”

Intra-I features several guest collaborators including Remi Graves, Shumba Maasai, Afronaut Zu, Ahnansé, Consensus and Oren Marshall, and is the first to include vocals.

We´ll have to wait until October 29th for the album to be out but we can already hear ‘The Spiral’ feat. Afronaut Zu & Ahnansé. The track comes with an accompanying video directed by Roisino & Eden. Take a look below.

Theon Cross announces debut album Fyah and shares new single ‘Activate’

07 January 2019

At the tail end of 2018, tuba player and composer Theon Cross, a big player in London’s vibrant contemporary jazz scene, teased his debut album with ‘Panda Village‘. News of the album have now been confirmed and we’ll only have to wait till February 15th for Fyah to be out through Gearbox Records. The album “encapsulates the culture and influences that have surrounded Cross growing up in the city, incorporating elements of Caribbean music, hip-hop, grime, jazz, club and electronic music”, describes the press release. “The new album perfectly exemplifies the future-facing magnetism of the current scene in London. Full of powerful tuba-driven basslines, fervent jazz soloing, raw yet precise rhythm sections and the introduction of synths, the album is all at once danceable and masterful.”

And there’s more reasons to get excited, with ‘Activate’, the explosive new track Cross has just unveiled, featuring fellow adventurous jazz musicians, saxophonist Nubya Garcia and drummer Moses Boyd. Take a listen now.

Theon Cross unveils new single ‘Panda Village’

23 December 2018

Photo: Andy Earl

Coming out of the vibrant London jazz scene that flourished in recent years, tuba player and composer Theon Cross has lent his talents to a multitude of stellar artists. Busy performing with the likes of Moses Boyd, Makaya McCraven, Kano, Jon Baptiste, Pharoe Monch and Emile Sande, Cross is also a member of Sons of Kemet and a permanent fixture in South London based collective Steam Down. He has also been busy with his own trio featuring Nubya Garcia and Moses Boyd, and ‘Panda Village’ is one of the fruits we can now get a taste of. There’s plans for more to come in 2019 and if ‘Panda Village’ is anything to go by, we just can’t wait!