Theon Cross

Theon Cross operates as a tuba player, composer, and bandleader from London. From 2015 onward he has stood at the center of the capital’s renewed jazz activity while serving as a preferred session musician, applying his distinctive “tuba bass” approach that merges jazz, funk, dubstep, grime, hip-hop, dub, soca, and improvised forms. As a founding member of the award-winning quartet Sons of Kemet, he has also collaborated with Moses Boyd, Jon Batiste, Makaya McCraven, and Courtney Pine, among additional artists. He belongs to the South London-based jazz-funk collective Steam Down. Cross directs his own varied ensemble in order to investigate the broad spectrum of sounds that shape the London environment. His self-released debut long-player Aspirations from 2015 earned nominations for Best Instrumentalist of the Year at the Jazz FM Awards and for Best Jazz Newcomer at the Parliamentary Awards. He issued Fyah in 2019; the recording reached the summit of the U.K. jazz charts and entered the jazz Top Ten in America. Once the COVID-19 pandemic halted touring, he put out multiple singles throughout 2020 and early 2021, which led to his third album, Intra-I.

Caribbean-born parents raised Cross in Brockley, where he began playing tuba at age nine. During his teenage years he received instruction both inside his school and within a Brazilian-style bloco, the brass-and-drums groups common at Rio’s Carnival that also appear on the U.K. street-festival circuit. He aimed to establish room for his horn within improvisational and swinging jazz frameworks. Cross transcribed trumpet solos along with classic bop and hard bop basslines originally recorded by Paul Chambers, himself once a tuba player, and cultivated an individual rhythmic method for the instrument shaped by the dancehall, electronic, hip-hop, and drum-and-bass music he cherished alongside jazz. For him the process involved absorbing jazz rather than merely studying it, then folding those lessons into the music he wished to create. He gained recognition on the South London club circuit as a player in hip-hop ensembles fronted by rappers such as Kano and Ruff Sqwad. After encountering drummer Moses Boyd and Hutchings at a club—the latter raised in the Caribbean—Cross joined their saxophonist in Sons of Kemet and Boyd in the Exodus and Solo Exodus groups, projects that blended jazz, grime, and electronic elements. He captured the Aspirations EP in 2015 and distributed it online. Club DJs and BBC presenters across Europe discovered and aired the recording. Building on his already considerable reputation as a sideman and session musician with the groups already mentioned plus Kansas Smitty’s House Band, Aspirations received positive notices that produced the award nominations. Between 2016 and 2017 Cross practiced intensively, performed with others in clubs and concerts, and appeared on recordings with Sande on Long Live the Angels, with the Ezra Collective on Juan Pablo: The Philosopher, and with saxophonist Nubya Garcia on her debut Nubya’s 5ive. Garcia and Boyd contributed to Sons of Kemet’s hit Impulse album Your Queen Is a Reptile. Cross supplied the track “Brockley” to Gilles Peterson’s award-winning, manifesto-styled compilation We Out Here, a wide-ranging overview of the emerging London scene. The tubist and Garcia joined McCraven for shows in Europe and the States, captured on Where We Come From (Chicago X London Mixtape). Near year’s end he released the advance single “Panda Village.” Fyah, issued the following February, was recorded by David Holmes and Giles Barrett. Cross performed the album with Boyd, Garcia, and saxophonist Wayne Francis (Ahnansé); his brother Nathaniel appeared on trombone for one track and guitarist Artie Zaitz played on two others. Fyah earned enthusiastic coverage from independent and mainstream outlets worldwide, which prompted extensive touring. The record led the British jazz charts and reached the Top Ten on the jazz album charts in the U.S.

Cross kept his ensemble on the road through the rest of that year and into 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic removed him from live performance. He did appear on Moses Boyd’s Dark Matter and, alongside his brother, trombonist Nathaniel Cross, on French experimental singer/songwriter Lafawndah’s second album, The Fifth Season.

In February 2021 the siblings featured on Marcus Joseph’s Beyond the Dome. Sons of Kemet issued their fourth long-player, Black to the Future, in May. Cross meanwhile prepared his own material. July brought the single and video for the charting track “We Go Again,” which featured vocalist Afronaut Zu and saxophonist Ahnansé. The same pair appeared on his second advance single, “Spiral,” released in September. Cross delivered the long-player Intra-I in late October. Its personnel included poet/drummer Remi Graves, poet and singer Shumba Maasai, rappers Afronaut Zu and Consensus (Antoine Gittens-Jackson), saxophonist Ahnansé, and electric tubist Oren Marshall.