Theon Cross Open Air

This year our favourite community arts festival Brockley Max will be celebrating their 25th year with a outdoor show in our garden.  Local hero and internationally acclaimed artist Theon Cross will be returning to the Fox & Firkin to headline the event.

Theon Cross is one of those rare musicians whose vision has redefined their instrument. The creative power and originality of Theon’s playing has reinvented the tuba’s place in modern music. Exploring the tuba’s possibilities in the light of diasporic bass culture, Theon has worked to develop the full sonic spectrum of his instrument, transforming it into a total 21st century sound-system, powered by breath. Using the instrument’s ability to produce sub-sonics, bass, mids, and tops, Theon creates complete sound-worlds, building up from rhythm and bass to arrive at melody. With this expanded low-end theory as his base, Theon approaches his music with a sensibility that travels freely across outernational style and genre, but which remains deeply rooted in his own African-Caribbean heritage.

A graduate of Guildhall school of music and an alumnus of the legendary Tomorrow’s Warriors, he is as at home with ensemble jazz as he is when playing road marches, collaborating with grime stars, or providing bassline pressure in reggae, afrobeat or soca settings. Theon released his first EP Aspirations in 2015 followed by his first album FYAH in 2019 and the Intra-I in 2021. He was a key member of Sons of Kemet until their dissolution in 2022. He has featured on albums by The Smile, Little Simz, Steamdown, Makaya McCraven, Joy Crookes, Ill Considered to name a few and contributed his version of Thelonious Monk’s Epistrophy to the Blue Note Re:Imagined series.

TIMINGS:

Doors 2pm

Theon Cross 6:30pm

Indoor afterparty: DJs from 8pm