Theo Croker / Sullivan Fortner: Play

The album "Play" brings together for the first time two of the most important American musicians of the current generation who are breaking new ground 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 discarded it. In its entirety. Theo Croker remembers: "When we played it back, it felt very old-fashioned. 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 being ourselves, it felt more like school. We had both played a lot of music from the great American songbook in the past. Those are great songs that we've been involved with. But it wasn't necessarily the music we gravitated towards 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 one particular genre."