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PHOTO: TOMEKA REID (b. 1977)
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/tomeka-reid-mn0000566769/biography
Tomeka Reid Biography
(b. 1977)
Biography by Thom Jurek
Tomeka Reid is an award-winning cellist, improviser, composer, educator, and bandleader. With her rich, woody tone and inventive playing technique she has been a key member of ensembles led by avant-garde legends like Anthony Braxton and Roscoe Mitchell. She has served foundational roles in groups led by a younger generation of visionaries including flutist Nicole Mitchell, vocalist Dee Alexander, trumpeter Jaimie Branch, and drummers Mike Reed and Makaya McCraven, to name only a few. Reid co-leads the adventurous Hear in Now string trio with violinist Mazz Swift and bassist Silvia Bolognesi, and leads her own quartet with Jason Roebke, Tomas Fujiwara, and Mary Halvorson. The latter's eponymously titled 2015 debut album showcased Reid's compositions and playing style, in which she balances space and rhythm with compelling harmonic invention and kinetic, engaged group improvisation. In the 2010s, she has recorded duo albums with saxophonist Nick Mazzarella (Signaling, 2017), joined a collaborative quartet with vocalist Kyoko Kitamura, guitarist Joe Morris, and cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum for 2018's Geometry of Caves, and was half of a duo outing with drummer Filippo Monico on The Mouser in 2019.
Reid was raised in the Washington, D.C. area and began studying the cello at age four. Throughout her childhood and adolescence, she studied classical though she also listened to mainstream popular music. Jazz was not a consideration until she was a college senior at the University of Maryland, College Park, where a mentor encouraged her to try improvisation. She was reticent since she felt she still had so much to learn about classical music, but she applied herself to learning improvisation. One summer, while visiting Chicago and playing in the season's Classical Symphony Orchestra, she met Nicole Mitchell, violinist Sam Williams, and cellist Kharma Foucher, the only other Black players in the orchestra. Reid was encouraged; she usually found herself the only Black orchestra member. In 2000, five days before she graduated from college, she took a Greyhound and moved to the Windy City. She and Mitchell, who was living in the city and already an up-and-coming member and educator in the legendary Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), re-established their friendship. Reid attended DePaul University's graduate school and joined Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble while studying improvisation. She made her recording debut on Mitchell's Afrika Rising in 2002, and they have been collaborators ever since. She also began working with other area musicians including Mike Reed, whose band Loose Assembly she joined. She eventually played with exploratory and challenging groups like vocalist Dee Alexander's Evolution Ensemble, the AACM's Great Black Music Ensemble, and others. Between 2007 and the end of 2008, Reid played on three albums each by Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble and Reed's Loose Assembly. From 2009-2010, she served as the secretary of the AACM. In 2010, Anthony Braxton enlisted her in his Tri-Centric Orchestra to record the Trillium E entry in his ongoing operatic cycle. In 2012, she recorded with Reed's and Jason Adasiewicz's Living by Lanterns band on the Cuneiform album New Myth Old Science. She formed the string trio Hear in Now with Swift and Bolognesi, issued their debut on Rudi, and played on Joshua Abrams' Represencing, Alexander's Sketches of Light, and with Roscoe Mitchell & Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble's Three Compositions: Live at Sant'Anna Arresi. In 2014, Reid was commissioned to create original music for the documentary Hairy Who & The Chicago Imagists to chronicle the Chicago Imagists, post-surrealist artists who exhibited together from the mid-'60s. Reid composed theme music for the film and made a wide range of multi-track improvisations, creating a tableau from which the film drew. Reid later recorded and released the score, making new versions of some tracks that transformed the material into a suite.
The following year proved integral. In addition to joining Roscoe Mitchell's quartet for the album Celebrating Fred Anderson, Reid cut Artifacts with Nicole Mitchell and Mike Reed. She formed the Tomeka Reid Quartet with Roebke, Fujiwara, and Halvorson. They issued their widely acclaimed self-titled debut as part of Thirsty Ear's Blue Series, curated by pianist Matthew Shipp. That year she also began directing the Chicago Jazz String Summit concert festival, a role she maintained even after she moved to New York in 2016. Reid was a member of Taylor Ho Bynum's band for the album Enter the Plustet on Pi Recordings and worked extensively with Braxton on Language Music 9: Legato Formings, 10+1tet, and on his Trillium J opera.
Reid is a 2016 recipient of a 3Arts Award in music and received her doctorate in music from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2017. That same year she played on several key recordings including Jaimie Branch's Fly or Die, guitarist James Elkington's Wintres Woma, Nicole Mitchell's Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds, and Liberation Narratives with the flutist and poet Haki Madhubuti; she also issued Not Living in Fear with Hear in Now, and Signaling in a duo with Nick Mazzarella. She was also part of Theater Gates & the Black Monks of Mississippi for the album One, issued by Finland's IHME Contemporary Art Festival, and worked with conductor/cornetist Rob Mazurek, Swift, Mitchell, and guitarist Jeff Parker (among others) for Wrecks, billed to the Third Coast Ensemble. In 2018, Reid joined Makaya McCraven on his seminal Universal Beings, recorded Ithra in a co-billed trio with Dave Rempis and Abrams, and cut Geometry of Caves with Kitamura, Morris, and Bynum. Reid also played in the cornetist's nonet for The Ambiguity Manifesto, and joined Mitchell's group for the acclaimed Maroon Cloud offering.
2019 proved an even busier year for the cellist. She took part in the Art Ensemble of Chicago's 50th Anniversary celebration on the album We Are on the Edge, and recorded Antichamber Music in a quartet with Claudia Solal, Katherine Young, and Benoit Delbecq. She recorded The Mouser with Monico, 7 Poets Trio with Fujiwara and vibraphonist Patricia Brennan, and Dave Douglas's Engage album in a band that also included guitarist Parker, saxophonist Anna Webber, drummer Katie Gentile, and bassist Nick Dunston. In the late summer, Reid accepted a position as Darius Milhaud Distinguished Visiting Professor at Mills College in Oakland, California (even though she remains based in New York).
In October, Reid's quartet issued their second offering, Old New, on Cuneiform. Produced by the cellist, it was recorded in Brooklyn the previous year by Eivind Opsvik, and mixed and mastered in Chicago. In November, Hear in Now and Addis Ababa's QWANQWA were jointly awarded a grant by the MacArthur Foundation called Facilitating International Cultural Exchange. Together they will collaborate on new work for a September 2020 performance at Chicago's Hyde Park Jazz Festival.
Tomeka Reid
Chicago based cellist, composer and educator, Tomeka Reid has been described as "a remarkably versatile player," (Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune). Equally adept in classical and jazz contexts, Ms. Reid predominantly finds herself in experimental and improvisatory settings and composes for a wide range of instrumentation, from big band to chamber ensemble. Ms. Reid's music combines her love for groove along with freer concepts. Ms. Reid is an integral part of Dee Alexander's Evolution Ensemble, Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble/Strings, Mike Reed's Loose Assembly, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) Great Black Music Ensemble, and co-leads the internationally recognized string trio, Hear in Now with performances in Poznan, Poland; Paris, France; Rome, Venice, Milan, Italy; Soazza, Switzerland; and in the US: Chicago, New York and Vermont. In addition to the aforementioned ensembles, Ms. Reid performs with many of today's forward thinking musicians in the world of jazz and creative music including Anthony Braxton, George Lewis, Roscoe Mitchell, Jeb Bishop, Myra Melford, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Mary Halvorson, Denis Fournier, Edward Wilkerson and Harrison Bankhead. Ms. Reid also leads her own trio featuring guitarist Matt Schneider and bassist Josh Abrams, for which she composes. Ms. Reid can be heard on numerous studio recordings. As an educator, Ms. Reid has led string improvisation workshops in Italy and the US. Most recently she co-directed the 2012 Vancouver Jazz Festival's High School Jazz Intensive. For seven years, Ms. Reid co-directed the string program at the University of Chicago's Laboratory School for students grade 5 thru 12. Ms. Reid is also an ABD doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois: Urbana-Champaign. As a composer, Ms. Reid has been commissioned by the AACM, the Chicago Jazz Festival and the Chicago Jazz Ensemble and has had several opportunities to showcase her work abroad at festivals such as Umbria Jazz, An Insolent Noise and Vignola Jazz. She has been nominated and awarded residencies for composition with the Ragdale Foundation and the 2nd Annual Make Jazz Fellowship hosted by the 18th Street Arts Organization. Ms. Reid was selected as a 2012 participant in the Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute held at the University of California: Los Angeles.
TOMEKA REID
CELLIST COMPOSER EDUCATOR
Reid grew up outside of Washington D.C., but her musical career began after moving to Chicago in 2000. Her work with Nicole Mitchell and various Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians-related groups proved influential. By focusing on developing her craft in countless improvisational contexts, Reid has achieved a stunning musical fluency. She is a Foundation of the Arts (2019) and 3Arts Awardee (2016), and received her doctorate in music from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2017.
Reid released her debut recording as a bandleader in 2015, with the Tomeka Reid Quartet, a vibrant showcase for the cellist’s improvisational acumen as well as her dynamic arrangements and compositional ability. The quartet’s second album, Old New, released in Oct 2019 on Cuneiform Records, has been described as “fresh and transformative--its songs striking out in bold, lyrical directions with plenty of Reid’s singularly elegant yet energetic and sharp-edged bow work.” Another reviewer noted that “while Reid’s compositional and technical gifts transcend jazz, they exemplify the tradition wondrously.”
Reid has been a key member of ensembles led by legendary reedists like Anthony Braxton (ZIM SEXTET) and Roscoe Mitchell (ROSCOE MITCHELL QUARTET, ART ENSEMBLE OF CHICAGO), as well as a younger generation of visionaries including flutist Nicole Mitchell (BLACK EARTH ENSEMBLE, ARTIFACTS), vocalist Dee Alexander (EVOLUTION ENSEMBLE), and drummer Mike Reed (LOOSE ASSEMBLY, LIVING BY LANTERNS, ARTIFACTS). She co-leads the adventurous string trio HEAR IN NOW, with violinist Mazz Swift and bassist Silvia Bolognesi, and in 2013 launched the first Chicago Jazz String Summit, a semi-annual three-day international festival of cutting edge string players held in Chicago. In the Fall of 2019 Tomeka Reid received a teaching appointment at Mills College as the Darius Milhaud chair in composition.
Classical Act
Tomeka Reid talks jazz, improvisation, and Washington Park
Jazz cellist Tomeka Reid has a soft-spoken way about her. Despite the major press and attention that’s lately been coming her way, Reid is slightly reluctant to talk about herself. Yet she is a formidable musician and improviser, currently juggling an album release, a doctoral thesis at DePaul, and an impressive international lineup of teaching and performing gigs. Combining her classical upbringing with her affinity for abstract and experimental string improvisation, Reid has recently finished a yearlong artist residency at the Washington Park Arts Incubator. Reid took a moment to talk with the Weekly about her work at the Incubator, her upcoming projects, and her own style of jazz improv and composition.
How long have you lived in Chicago?
Since 2000, so almost fourteen years. Actually, it’s crazy. I remember my mom was actually going to go to art school in Texas and we took the train all the way from Maryland to Texas and we had a layover in Chicago. And I remember thinking, “Oh my gosh, this place is amazing!” I wanted to come back here. I visited a friend at Northwestern my Freshman year of college, and I was like, “As soon as I graduate I’m moving here.”
Can you tell me a bit about your background?
I grew up in the D.C. metro area, so I started taking lessons in public schools. I’m grateful to public schools for having music programs. And then I went on and took some private lessons and then I went on to the University of Maryland for my undergrad. I moved to Chicago and got my master’s at DePaul in music as well.
Then I started teaching at the Lab School, actually, for about seven years. Towards the end of my work there I started a doctorate in music, in Jazz Studies. Both of my degrees are in classical. I was like, you know, I’m doing a lot of jazz and creative music. I felt like I should know more about this world, because I had studied so much classical music. So that’s why I went back and got that degree. And that’s actually what I’m trying to finish this semester.
So you have a classical training, but now you’ve moved into more jazz. Did you always know you wanted to go into that?
I think I’ve always known I wanted to do something besides classical. It wasn’t so much that I initially wanted to do classical, per se. But it’s like you play cello so you get pushed in that direction, because that’s the repertoire for that instrument. But I had a mentor in my last year of undergrad and he was like, “You should try improvising. There’s a rock band audition, you should try that.” I was like, “I need to learn my concertos! I need to learn these sonatas!”
I felt like it would take away, but when I moved to Chicago I got pushed into the jazz thing by a good friend of mine, a flute player, Nicole Mitchell. She was like, “Come on! Try improvising.” I remember she wanted me to do all these crazy sounds. And I’m like, “What? I just spent how many years of my life trying to not make those sounds, and now you want me to do that in public?” So that was hard. And I was always actually really shy. So I think it’s funny that I ended up doing jazz. Because, you know, the whole process of you creating on the spot.
It’s more personality-driven.
Yeah. Since I was always kind of shy I felt like, “Why am I doing this?” But I liked it. So I just kept doing it.
What do you see as the bridge between the classical training that people who are really serious about music have to go through, and the jazz world? Do you think there’s a crossover?
I think classical players should get exposed to more improvising, I’ll say that. Because it was a part of our tradition in the Baroque time. I think in the Classical era even, people were writing their own cadenzas, so that was still kind of improvising. But I feel like by the Romantic era the composer, what they wrote, was gospel.
So I kind of wish that string programs at the secondary or at the university level encouraged their players to improvise more. Not everybody is going to be a classical player and there are other ways that you can still enjoy playing. And maybe people would play more if they felt like they could express themselves in other ways, besides just this select repertoire.
It seems as though the Incubator has a kind of place-based mentality. The things that they do there and what Theaster Gates talks a lot about is this idea of creating a hub in a specific place in Chicago. In Washington Park. Is that something that drew you in?
I guess I felt drawn to the residency because I live practically down the street. And I’m really involved in my community, in Bronzeville. I go to meetings and I’m concerned about what happens in the neighborhood and stuff like that. The Incubator is in the 3rd Ward, which is my ward. So I saw this as an opportunity to use my practice to do something in my community besides just going to meetings and sometimes feeling powerless against the political engine here.
Is that what ended up happening?
I think so. I ended up putting on some events there, like the First Mondays Jazz Series that’s ongoing. It was only supposed to be for four months, but it’s been going almost a year now. And a lot of people in the community come and I think people appreciate it. So that’s really cool.
What was the most surprising thing about working at the Incubator or the Logan Center? Did anything happen that you didn’t expect?
Um, not really. I feel like they were really supportive of my work. It was nice to say, “Oh, I want to put on a festival,” and they just responded, “Okay, this is going to be a lot of work.” But they supported it, so that was cool. And I like that they kind of gave us free rein to do what we wanted to do.
Are you working on more composing now?
Yeah, well, I’m trying to finish up this paper. But I just recorded my first record as a leader. So I need to go through that and put that out. I’m in Italy for the month of March. And then in April I’m really excited about this Anthony Braxton project I’m going to be participating in, recording one of his new operas. But what’s cool about it is that he incorporates new music and improv. It’s fun, it keeps you on your toes. He’s a composer, he’s a reedist. He’s from Chicago! He’s part of Access Contemporary Music. In June I’m going to Vancouver to teach in the Vancouver Jazz Festival. And then July it’s kind of chill, which I’m happy about.
I’m just planning for what’s next, I want to apply for more residencies so I can do more. I mean I can do work here and it’s nice to be home. But it’s also nice to get away so you have more of a focus. Composing is on the top of my list for this year, though. I need to write more in general.
What’s your record that you’ve just finished?
It’s a quartet record. Cello, bass, guitar, drums. It’s myself and Jason Roebke, a really great jazz bass player in Chicago. Mary Halvorson is on guitar and Tomas Fujiwara on drums. It’s mostly my compositions, so I’m really excited about it.
These pieces on the record, some of them I’ve had for years. Though some of them I wrote between the two residencies I just did the past year and a half.
What is your composition process like?
Usually I use GarageBand and I sing one of the parts. Either the melody or the bass line will come to me. Because I’m just not quick enough to sing it and write it and not lose the pitches. And then I’ll build from there.
Do you think there’s much of a relationship between being an improviser and being a composer?
[Long pause] I guess it’s hard, because when you’re improvising you are composing but you’re not able to edit in the same way. Because once it’s out there, it’s just kind of out there. I guess you do have different mindsets. You have to have patience in both, but somehow you have to not beat yourself up when you’re improvising, if you didn’t like what you just did. You have to be more gentle with yourself, I guess.
Improvising I think can fuel composition. When you’re improvising and you’re not editing yourself you can come up with little ideas when you listen back.
Does your composing have any sort of narrative component?
I feel like when I write separate pieces I always have someone in mind. Or something in mind. Like I have a song I wrote for my mom. Or I think about a space or a place. It’s a tribute to someone or someplace.
Can you describe an example of that?
Well, I mean there’s a handful of us improvising string players. But a lot of my heroes, I guess, are not among the living. So, for example, I always wished I could have played with Billy Bang. So when I learned that he passed I knew that I wanted to write something kind of in tribute to him, called “Billy Bang’s Bounce.” Whenever I would listen to his music it would have kind of a sad character, but it was also kind of bouncy. It was kind of a reminder to myself: if you want to play with your heroes, contact them!
Any other projects on the back burner? Any dream projects?
I guess just writing more. Right now I feel really swamped with school. I think it would be cool though to have an improvising orchestra. Some sort of string ensemble. And then I think it would be cool to team up with someone to do something like Curtis Mayfield recordings, because that sound is what really made me want to play strings. That type of sound, just a band with strings behind it. I love that sound. I often wish I was born in that time period and could have played on some of those sessions.
https://jazztimes.com/features/tomeka-reid-story-of-her-life/
Tomeka Reid: Story of Her Life
The cellist-composer on her Chicago jazz family, recent quartet record and more
The cover art of Chicago-based cellist Tomeka Reid’s new release on Thirsty Ear, Tomeka Reid Quartet, her debut as a leader, portrays a young girl bathed in light, apparently either dancing or running through a thicket of trees and undergrowth toward the light’s source. It seems as if she’s found herself in a land of enchantment whose wonders she can apprehend only if she forges ahead-serendipity, toughened by determination.
Years earlier, she’d visited Chicago with her family and was smitten; during college, she visited a few more times. “I [eventually] stayed here for a summer,” she recalls over coffee on Chicago’s South Side. “That’s when I met [flutist] Nicole [Mitchell] in a symphony. It was called the Classical Symphony Orchestra. Playing in orchestras, I was usually the only black person, so it was like, ‘Whaat?’ There were three! Her, Sam Williams playing violin and Kharma Foucher played the cello. I wasn’t the only one! I said, ‘Oh, my gosh, I want to move here.’ I think within five days of graduating [in 2000], I took the Greyhound and moved out here.”
Reid had grown up listening to mainstream popular music as well as classical, and in college she’d begun to delve into jazz. Nonetheless, she says, she’d never anticipated anything like the depth and richness she discovered in Chicago after re-establishing her friendship with Mitchell, who by then was an ascendant figure in the community of improvisers centered on the AACM. “It wasn’t intentional,” she asserts. “It’s kind of like the universe just [said], ‘You need to go in this direction.’ I didn’t know about the AACM before I moved here. I just knew I wanted to move to Chicago because I wanted to be around more black musicians. I was just kind of drawn into it.”
It certainly didn’t take her long to catch up. As a member of Mitchell’s Black Earth Ensemble, she learned to free her muse and abandon her inhibitions. (“Just make some sounds!” Mitchell instructed.) She eventually joined other exploratory and challenging groups: vocalist Dee Alexander’s Evolution Ensemble, drummer Mike Reed’s Loose Assembly and Living by Lanterns, and the AACM’s Great Black Music Ensemble, among others. In 2010, Anthony Braxton enlisted her in his Tri-Centric Orchestra to record Trillium E, part of his ongoing operatic cycle, and she worked in Braxton’s Falling River Music nonet in 2014. Today, she fronts her own Chicago-based unit and co-leads the cello/violin/double-bass trio Hear in Now. With Mitchell and drummer Mike Reed, she released the acclaimed Artifacts last year on the 482 Music label. As a composer, she has garnered commissions from the AACM, the Chicago Jazz Festival and the Chicago Jazz Ensemble.
Reflecting her musical trajectory, the new CD came together as a result of disparate elements that congealed at the appropriate time. “Some of these compositions,” she notes, “were written two and a half, maybe three years ago. [All except one, Eric Dolphy’s “17 West,” are Reid originals.] It’s something I’ve talked about with female leaders I’ve worked with. Every time, [they’ve said,] ‘You should get yourself out there. You write good music.'”
Produced by Mike Reed, the disc features Reid with guitarist Mary Halvorson, bassist Jason Roebke and drummer Tomas Fujiwara. Even on arco passages, Reid achieves a timbral intensity and rhythmic thrust of the kind usually associated with electrified jazz fusion. She and Roebke interweave, tossing solos and accompaniments back and forth, alternating lower- and higher-register pizzicato runs and bowed lines. Halvorson, like Fujiwara, summons emotional fervor through understatement rather than declamation; her leads and comping simmer with unforced brio. The musical and emotional spectrum is luminous, not unlike that mystical light illuminating the landscape for the journeying girl on the cover.
“I was drawing upon all the influences I’ve been exposed to here,” Reid affirms. “I really like free playing, but I still love melodic things. I didn’t want to shy away from anything.” She emphasizes that the electronic-like edginess spiking her sound is intentional-she’s determined to challenge the stereotype of the cello as a “mellow” instrument. “It sounds beautiful, but the cello can also do so many other things-even though I still feel, when I listen back, like, ‘Ahh! There’s a lot of mellowness in there!’ So I’m trying to go even more away from that. That’s one of the beauties of playing a string instrument: You can bend, you can slide, you can get these glass qualities, you can get all these different qualities that I still don’t feel I’ve fully explored. I’m still uncovering.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/arts/music/tomeka-reid-a-new-jazz-power-source.html?_r=0
Music
Tomeka Reid, a New Jazz Power Source
Tomeka Reid
Tomeka Reid (born 1977) is an American composer, improviser, cellist, curator, and teacher.[1][2]
Reid has performed and recorded with the Art Ensemble of Chicago,[3] Nicole Mitchell,[4] Anthony Braxton,[5] the AACM Great Black Music Ensemble,[6] Mike Reed's Loose Assembly,[7] and Roscoe Mitchell.[8] She leads the Tomeka Reid Quartet, with Tomas Fujiwara, Jason Roebke, and Mary Halvorson,[9] and is co-leader of Hear In Now, a trio with Mazz Swift and Silvia Bolognesi.[10]
Reid founded and, as of 2022, still runs the now-annual Chicago Jazz String Summit and was named a 2017 "Chicago Jazz Hero" by the Jazz Journalists Association.[11] In 2019, Reid was appointed Darius Milhaud Distinguished Visiting Professor at Mills College.[12] She is a 2021 United States Artists Fellow and 2022 MacArthur Fellow.[13][14]
Early life and classical education
Reid grew up outside of Washington, D.C., and in the 4th grade began playing cello at her elementary school in Silver Spring, Maryland.[15] Reid attended a French immersion school, but spoke very little French; she attributes much of her early enthusiasm for cello to the allowance of English in music class.[15] Reid could not afford additional cello instruction until high school: she briefly attended the Duke Ellington School of the Arts before dropping out due to the high cost of out-of-state enrollment, but assistance for low-income students enabled her to study at Levine School of Music in D.C.[16]
After high school, Reid began studying classical music at the University of Maryland, where she reconnected with Saïs Kamalidiin, a professor she had met at the Duke Ellington School.[17] Reid primarily studied classical music, but Kamalidiin introduced her to jazz performance and improvisation.[17] Reid also met Nicole Mitchell as an undergraduate, during a summer spent in Chicago;[18] Mitchell became another close mentor in improvised music, and Reid went on to perform on over ten albums with her, many as part of Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble and Black Earth Strings quartet.[19] Reid continued to focus on classical music for the next several years after meeting Mitchell: she earned her Bachelor of Music in 2000,[20] and then moved to Chicago, where she continued her studies in classical cello performance at DePaul University. She completed her Master of Music in 2002.[21] After graduating, Reid began teaching at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where she co-directed the string program for seven years.[22]
Career in jazz
Reid became increasingly involved in the jazz community after moving to Chicago, and in 2009 she decided to more fully commit to the genre by beginning coursework toward a Doctor of Musical Arts in Jazz Studies.[23][20]
Later that year Reid played a show at The Hideout in a special version of Mike Reed's Loose Assembly, with the quintet of Reed, Reid, Greg Ward, Jason Adasiewicz, and Joshua Abrams joined by Roscoe Mitchell. A recording of the performance was later released as the album Empathetic Parts.[24] In 2010 Reid was also appointed Treasurer of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians[25] and played the Umbria Jazz Festival as part of the AACM Great Black Music Ensemble.[26]
In 2011, Reid left her job as orchestra director at the Lab School, choosing to instead focus on her career as a musician.[1] New Braxton House released Trillium E, the first studio recording of an Anthony Braxton opera, featuring the Tri-Centric Orchestra, which Reid had joined for the recording.[5] The following year she was awarded a residency at the University of Chicago's Washington Park Arts Incubator[27] and released her first album with Hear In Now, a co-led trio with Mazz Swift and Silvia Bolognesi.[10]
In 2013, Reid founded the Chicago Jazz String Summit (CJSS), an international festival of avant-garde string performances.[28] After a three-year gap, starting in 2016 Reid has continued to organize the CJSS as an annual Chicago event during the first weekend of May, even though she moved to New York City for four years.[29] Reid ran the 2020 and 2021 Chicago Jazz String Summits as online streamed events, via Chicago's Experimental Sound Studio's facilities, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[30][31][32]
The Chicago Tribune named Reid Chicagoan of the Year in Jazz[33] at the end of a highly decorated 2015: Reid completed and released her first album of original works, the eponymous Tomeka Reid Quartet,[34] and a co-led trio with Nicole Mitchell and Mike Reed released their self-titled debut, Artifacts.[35] The Chicago Reader included the quartet release, with Tomas Fujiwara, Jason Roebke, and Mary Halvorson, as among the best albums of 2015[36] and the best Chicago albums of the decade.[37] DownBeat said Artifacts "might be one of the most important AACM records in a generation".[35] Both albums were included in the year's NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll.[38] Reid performed with a quartet arranged by Roscoe Mitchell, a recording of which was released later that year as Celebrating Fred Anderson,[39] and performed at the Chicago Jazz Festival, Hyde Park Jazz Festival, Pritzker Pavilion, Symphony Center, and Chicago Cultural Center.[33]
In 2016, Reid performed with Anthony Braxton's "10+1tet" at Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee[40] and was the recipient of a 3Arts Award.[41]
Reid received her DMA in Jazz Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 2017.[42][43] Her year in releases included the Hear in Now trio's second record, Not Living In Fear,[44] and Signaling, a duo album with Nick Mazzarella that was also included among the Chicago Reader's best Chicago albums of the decade.[37] She was named 2017 "Chicago Jazz Hero" by the Jazz Journalists Association.[11]
In 2018, Reid performed with the Chicago Composers Orchestra in premiering her first orchestral composition,[45] and traveled to Ethiopia, where she studied the masenqo, an East African string instrument.[46] She appeared on 2018 releases including a collective trio album with Dave Rempis and Joshua Abrams, titled Ithra;[47] Geometry Of Caves, by a quartet with Kyoko Kitamura, Taylor Ho Bynum, and Joe Morris; and on Makaya McCraven's Universal Beings.[48]
In 2019, Reid was a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists recipient; the award assisted her in commuting between tour and work when she was notified in late August that she had received a fall appointment as Darius Milhaud Chair (visiting professor) in Music Composition at Mills College.[49][42]
She was winner of the "Miscellaneous Instrument" category in the 2019 and 2020 DownBeat critics polls[46] and is a 2021 United States Artists Fellow. In June 2020, the New York Times consulted Tomeka Reid, along with artists including Yo-Yo Ma, to offer suggestions for cello recordings that could make newcomers to the instrument "fall in love" with its sounds; Reid recommended a composition by Abdul Wadud.[50]
In October 2022, Reid was awarded a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship.[13] During 2022 she has been "Improviser in residence" for the city of Moers, Germany, in affiliation with the Moers [music] Festival.[51]
Personal life
In 2020, Reid moved back to Chicago, after having left for New York City circa 2016.[52] As of 2022, Reid lives in Chicago with her husband David Brown, professor of architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago.[13]
Discography
As leader
- Hairy Who & the Chicago Imagists (Corbett vs. Dempsey, 2014)[53]
- Tomeka Reid Quartet (Thirsty Ear, 2015)[54]
- Old New (Cuneiform Records, 2019)[9]
As co-leader
- Artifacts (with Nicole Mitchell and Mike Reed)
- Artifacts (482 Music, 2015)[55]
- ...and then there's this (Astral Spirits Records, 2021)[56]
- Alexander Hawkins & Reid
- Shards and Constellations (Intakt Records, 2020)
- Hear In Now (with Mazz Swift and Silvia Bolognesi)
- Hear in Now (Rudi Records, 2012)[10]
- Not Living In Fear (International Anthem Recording Company, 2017)[44]
- Joe McPhee / Dave Rempis / Reid / Brandon Lopez / Paal Nilssen-Love
- Of Things Beyond Thule Vol. 1 (Aerophonic, 2020)
- Reid / Kyoko Kitamura / Taylor Ho Bynum / Joe Morris
- Geometry of Caves (Relative Pitch Records, 2018)
- Geometry of Distance (Relative Pitch, 2019)
- Reid & Nick Mazzarella
- Signaling (Nessa Records, 2017)
- Reid / Filippo Monico
- The Mouser (Relative Pitch, 2019)
- Reid & Joe Morris
- Combinations 2020 (RogueArt, 2020)
- Dave Rempis / Reid / Joshua Abrams
- Ithra (Aerophonic, 2018) [47]
- Claudia Solal, Katherine Young, Reid, Benoît Delbecq
- Antichamber Music (The Bridge Sessions, 2019)
- The Urge Trio (with Christoph Erb and Keefe Jackson)
- Live In Toledo (Veto Records, 2013)[57]
- Live At the Hungry Brain (Veto Records, 2017)
- Watershed (with Denis Fournier, Nicole Mitchell, Hanah Jon Taylor, Bernard Santacruz)
- Watershed (RogueArt, 2012)
As sideperson
- with Anthony Braxton
- Trillium E (New Braxton House, 2011)
- 10+1tet (Knoxville) (Braxton Bootleg, 2016)
- Anthony Braxton's Language Music (Sound American, 2016)
- with Jaimie Branch
- Fly or Die (International Anthem, 2017)
- Fly or Die II: Bird Dogs of Paradise (International Anthem, 2019)
- with Taylor Ho Bynum
- Enter the Plustet (Firehouse 12, 2016)
- The Ambiguity Manifesto (Firehouse 12, 2019)
- with Nicole Mitchell
- Afrika Rising (Dreamtime, 2002)
- Hope, Future and Destiny (Dreamtime, 2004)
- Black Unstoppable (Delmark, 2007)
- Renegades (Delmark, 2008)
- Xenogenesis Suite (Firehouse 12, 2008)
- Intergalactic Beings (FPE, 2014)
- Liberation Narratives (Black Earth Music, 2017)
- Mandorla Awakening II (FPE, 2017)
- Maroon Cloud (FPE, 2018)
- Mitchell and Lisa E. Harris, EarthSeed (FPE,2020)
- with Mike Reed's Loose Assembly
- Last Year's Ghost (482 Music, 2007)
- The Speed of Change (482 Music, 2008)
- Empathetic Parts (482 Music, 2010)
- With others
- The AACM Great Black Music Ensemble, At Umbria Jazz 2009 (Musica Jazz, 2010)
- Joshua Abrams, Represencing (Eremite, 2012)
- Living By Lanterns (Jason Adasiewicz & Mike Reed), New Myth/Old Science (Cuneiform, 2012)
- All City Affairs (Peter Andreadis), Bees (Lujo, 2006)
- Jason Ajemian, From Beyond (Sundmagi, 2006)
- Dee Alexander, Sketches of Light (EGEA, 2012)
- Art Ensemble of Chicago, We Are On the Edge (Pi, 2019)
- Art Ensemble of Chicago, The Sixth Decade: From Paris to Paris (RogueArt, 2023)[58]
- Baby Teeth, The Simp (Lujo, 2007)
- Birthmark, Antibodies (Polyvinyl, 2012)
- Silvia Bolognesi, Chicago Sessions (Fonterossa Records, 2015)
- Bronze, Calypso Shakedown (Unsound Records, 2009)
- Jeremy Cunningham, The Weather Up There (Northern Spy, 2020)[59]
- Dave Douglas, Engage (Greenleaf, 2019)
- James Elkington, Wintres Woma (Paradise Of Bachelors, 2017)
- Kahil El'Zabar, Kahil El’Zabar's America the Beautiful (Spiritmuse Records, 2020)
- Tomas Fujiwara, 7 Poets Trio (RogueArt, 2019)
- Theaster Gates, One (IHME, 2017)
- Giddy Motors, Make It Pop (FatCat, 2002)[60]
- Hecuba, Paradise (Manimal Vinyl, 2009)
- HiM, Peoples (After Hours, 2005)
- Devin Hoff, The Lost Songs Of Lemuria (self-released, 2013)
- Luz, Polemonta (Auand, 2014)
- Man Man, Rabbit Habits (Anti-, 2008)
- The Margots (Adrienne Pierluissi, Ken Vandermark, et al.) Pescado (Okka Disk, 2013)
- Makaya McCraven, Universal Beings (International Anthem, 2018)
- Makaya McCraven, Universal Beings E&F Sides (International Anthem, 2020)
- Dave McDonnell Group, The Time Inside a Year (Delmark, 2015)
- Roscoe Mitchell & Nicole Mitchell, Three Compositions (RogueArt, 2012)
- Roscoe Mitchell, Celebrating Fred Anderson (Nessa, 2015)
- The National Trust, Kings & Queens (Thrill Jockey, 2006)
- Mankwe Ndosi & Body MemOri, Felt/not said (Auspice Now, 2021)
- OHMME, Parts (Joyful Noise, 2018)
- Owen, Ghost Town (Polyvinyl, 2011)
- Owen, L'Ami du Peuple (Polyvinyl, 2013)
- Junius Paul, Ism (International Anthem, 2019)
- Dave Rempis, Nettles (Aerophonic, 2016)
- Kristo Rodzevski, Bitter Almonds (Much Prefer Records, 2017)
- Savath & Savalas (Guillermo Scott Herren), Golden Pollen (Anti-, 2007)
- Third Coast Ensemble (Rob Mazurek, Christophe Rocher, et al.), Wrecks (RogueArt, 2017)
- TromBari (Glenn Wilson & Jim Pugh), The Devil's Hopyard (Jazzmaniac, 2012)
Artists Respond: Tomeka Reid Performs "Airs for Eliza"
Tomeka Reid Residency: Musical Presentation
Cellist, composer, and educator Tomeka Reid presents a performance of six works as part of her residency with the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. After the May 27 premiere, viewers are invited to "Meet the Artist" in a live Zoom session moderated by Distinguished Professor James Newton.
Strings Player of the Year
TOMEKA REID
Cellist, composer, educator
Nominees: Regina Carter, Sara Caswell, Mark Feldman
It’s a few days before Tomeka Reid is set to release her second album as a bandleader, and the cellist/composer is busy. Not so much with album prep and tour, but with all of the other things she does when she’s not leading a band. Reid is currently teaching composition at Mills College, and is the Darius Milhaud Distinguished Visiting Professor this semester. “It’s super awesome; it’s just so last-minute,” Reid says of the honor, on a call. “I had a full tour scheduled this fall, so fitting it all in has been very interesting, to say the least.” In a day, she’ll be performing in Los Angeles, then flying out to Rome, where she will tour Europe as a member of the legendary Art Ensemble of Chicago. Then, she’ll briefly return home to Queens before flying back to California to teach again.
Somewhere in between the travels, Tomeka Reid Quartet’s thrilling and highly anticipated second album, Old New will be released. For that album, Reid reconvened the group that was first heard on the crackling 2015 debut: drummer Tomas Fujiwara, double bass player Jason Roebke, and guitarist Mary Halvorson. Its songs strike out in bold, lyrical directions, the three string instruments darting amongst one another like bees in a garden. “We’re always all busy, but we find moments somehow to make it happen,” she says. “It keeps it fresh and I’m always excited for it.”
Since her debut in 2002, Reid has emerged as a vital new voice on the jazz scene, her cello serving as foil to greats like Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, and Nicole Mitchell. Despite the century’s worth of jazz, the cello remains an underutilized resource, usually deployed by bassists like Ron Carter and Oscar Pettiford rather than treated as a frontline instrument in its own regard. “I’m trying to change the cello’s role in jazz!” Reid exclaims.
It’s a transformation that mirrors her own life. Born in Washington D.C., Reid grew up studying classical cello, but her perspective shifted when she moved to Chicago in 2000 for graduate school. The Windy City’s status as home to some of jazz’s fiercest innovators opened up an entirely new world of sound to Reid. “At most pedagogy, you’re just not encouraged to improvise, you’re only trained to play what’s on the page,” she says, adding that the emphasis on intonation and competition for orchestral work makes it hard to just let go and play. “It’s tough for string players. It’s beaten into your head to be perfect all the time, and that can squeeze the joy out of making sound.”
Reid threw herself into Chicago’s improv scene, working in numerous contexts as accompanist, before leading her own ensembles, which range from trios to large ensembles to the quartet. “I’m only just getting used to wearing so many hats,” she says. “Like now, I’m a teacher, too. In some groups, I’m more the bass player, so I have to have that dexterity for playing more pizzicato. But in other groups, I’m the soloist. It just keeps me on my toes.”
Now based in New York City, Reid’s rise comes at a fortuitous time, when many female improvisers are pushing past the boundaries that hampered previous generations. “I feel very fortunate to be in this time with so many amazing improvisors and so many amazing women improvisors that are doing really creative stuff,” she says. Case in point, her quartet sparring partner Mary Holvorson was just a week ago announced as a MacArthur Fellow. “I was so stoked when I saw it was Mary. She deserves it, she works so hard.”
In much the same way that Reid nodded to forbearers like Eric Dolphy and Billy Bang on the Quartet’s first album, Old New pays tribute to her mentors, colleagues, and family members. Her mentor Nicole Mitchell has the jaunty “Niki’s Bop” named after her, riding a snare roll from Fujiwara and pulsing line from Roebke as Reid and Halvorson dart around. Her maternal grandmother also has a piece named for her, while an old photograph of her paternal grandmother appears in the album packaging. “Ballad” was “a secret dedication to Mary; the quirkiness of the tune made me think of her,” says Reid, and it moves from stately to frenzied and back. Even though most of “Edelin” is spare and diffuse, Reid confesses that the melodic line that emerges near the end is informed by her secret Mariah Carey fandom.
Throughout the nine compositions of Old New, there’s a visceral thrill in hearing how Reid’s cello and Halvorson’s electric guitar urge, grapple, startle, and support one another. “Wabash Blues” features a melody that zigzags in dizzying coordination with Halvorson and then spins off into some of Reid’s own mesmerizing bow work, elegant yet energetic and sharp-edged. And when Halvorson emerges, she’s like a Bird-of-Paradise in a garden salad, colorful, prickly, and totally weird at once.
Old New was recorded with the group playing in the same room, approaching it like a live set, that spontaneous energy remains intact on the album. “But even with this recording, I hear myself out of tune and that’s still in my brain after all those years of classical training,” Reid says. “As I get older, I let that go. Making music and enjoying those mistakes, it’s about the feeling, the connection with the other musicians.”
Moving to Chicago in 2000 to attend a graduate music program at DePaul University she connected with flutist/composer Nicole Mitchell, a relationship that recalibrated her entire aesthetic orientation. While she was embraced by the improvisational music scene, Reid learned to make her own way, which was both liberating and extremely challenging. She found the ideal outfits for evolution as a member of several celebrated Chicago bands.
She co-leads the adventurous string trio Hear in Now with violinist Mazz Swift and bassist Silvia Bolognesi. When the time came to launch a band to play her original music, she sought out advice from Nicole Mitchell, who suggested Halvorson. Reid was already working with Fujiwara in Mike Reed’s fascinating Sun Ra-inspired ensemble Living By Lanterns (which released the acclaimed 2012 Cuneiform album Old Myth, New Science). Approaching both players made eminent sense. Halvorson and Fujiwara already played together in the collective trio Thumbscrew with bassist Michael Formanek, and power Formanek’s Ensemble Kolossus. The three of them are also the foundation of Halvorson’s quintet Code Girl, a project introduced on the acclaimed 2018 album of the same name. Halvorson and Fujiwara first started playing together in cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum’s Sextet (Reid joined an expanded version of the band on 2016’s Enter the PlusTet). Among other bands, they also work together in the collective quartets Reverse Blue (with Chris Speed and Eivind Opsvik) and The Thirteenth Assembly (with Bynum and violist Jessica Pavone), and the trio The Outlouds with clarinetist Ben Goldberg.
"Old New is bubbling with ideas, as well as an energy that feels too surging to be over-composed but too exacting to be improvised. A great listen." – Music Tap
The jazz polls might still list cello under the miscellaneous instrument category, but in the hands of Tomeka Reid it’s an essential vehicle for unfettered jazz exploration. Old New,
the second album by the Tomeka Reid Quartet, is a project that
exemplifies why she’s quickly become a definitive figure on the 21st
century jazz scene. As a composer, arranger, improviser, bandleader,
and impresario, she embodies jazz’s progressive ethos. Crafting
memorable tunes brimming with arresting textures and melodies, Reid
creates music palpably connected to the tradition while recasting those
sounds to meet her own expressive needs. Old new, indeed!
While Reid has recorded prolifically since making her debut on flutist Nicole Mitchell’s 2002 Black Earth Ensemble album Afrika Rising (DreamTime Records), Old New is only her second album leading her own band, following up on the eponymous Tomeka Reid Quartet (Thirsty Ear). Like that 2015 release, the band’s second album features a brilliant cast with guitarist Mary Halvorson and drummer Tomas Fujiwara, who play together in at least half a dozen different ensembles, and Chicago bassist Jason Roebke. It’s essentially a string band, an electro-acoustic hybrid in which any player might take on bass, melodic or rhythmic responsibilities at any given time.
“I wanted to have a string-centered group,” says Reid, who was recently voted Violinist/Violist/Cellist of the Year for the second consecutive time by the Jazz Journalists Association. “I wanted a harmonic instrument, but not piano and I wanted to go in a different direction. For this quartet I like Mary’s manner of using pedals in interesting and creative ways. You can hear right away that it’s her. I like that contrast with me being all acoustic in this ensemble.”
Based in Queens since 2016, Reid wrote much of the Old New music with the support of a grant from Roulette Intermedium. The album opens with the title track, a slippery piece that almost serves as a manifesto for an artist consciously building on the work of her most adventurous string predecessors. It’s a Reid original “that’s an old form, a hymn,” she says. In much the same way, “Wabash Blues” opens with Fujiwara’s clattery trap work, a jittery introduction for an incident-filled soundscape inspired by the changeable energy of the Chicago block where she lived before moving to New York City.
Reid is as effective evoking people as places. “Niki's Bop” is a tribute to her dear friend and mentor Nicole Mitchell, a joyous, terpsichorean line that practically shimmies. “I could imagine her playing that melody on flute,” Reid says. “She’s a huge inspiration in my life. There’s nothing better than writing a song for somebody.”
Mary Halvorson was a source of inspiration for “Ballad” and the piece’s coiled energy, conversational flow and wry asides seem to reveal facets of the guitarist that aren’t necessarily apparent. “The melody reminded me of something about Mary’s personality, sweet, no nonsense, reserved, and yet funnier than most people might know,” Reid says.
Written for her maternal grandmother, “Sadie” is a boppish line that’s as poised and elegant as the woman herself. Designed to feature Roebke, “Edelin” is a mysterious, slow-breath piece that takes on density as it goes. “Jason should be much better known,” Reid says. “He does great, interesting work, and being in Chicago you can get overlooked. There are so many people doing interesting things there.”
Reid closes the album with “Peripatetic,” an Anthony Braxton-inspired tune that covers a lot of distance in a relatively short span, from the portentous opening statement to the skittery mid-section to the almost operatic conclusion. Speaking of gorgeous melodies, the pizzicato-powered “RN” offers a glimpse at Reid’s love of pop music, with its incantatory refrain and unabashed lyricism. It’s a sweet sign off, and an implicit promise that there are many more realms for this band to investigate.
If Reid’s music seems to draw on a multiplicity of sources, that’s because she’s absorbed a mind-boggling array of influences in a relatively short period of time. Over the past decade she’s collaborated with veteran visionaries connected to Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), performing and recording with Anthony Braxton, Nicole Mitchell, Roscoe Mitchell (no relation) and the collective he co-founded, the Art Ensemble of Chicago. She’s also worked closely with contemporaries such as drummer Mike Reed, cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, and veteran masters such as Nicole Mitchell and pianist Myra Melford, among many others. Reid has embraced her role as a champion of creative string players, on and off the bandstand. “I’m a big advocate for strings in improvised music, particularly violinists, violists and cellists who are their own leaders,” says Reid, who founded and runs the Chicago Jazz String Summit. “A lot of my projects are centered around string players.”
“What’s awesome as a cellist
is that we can create a sound for ourselves,” said Reid, who was
recently awarded a prestigious grant from the Foundation for
Contemporary Arts. “We do have a history, but not the same kind as
trumpet, saxophone and pianists for example, with hundreds and hundreds
of predecessors. I’ve come to appreciate that a lot more.” With Old New, Tomeka Reid has staked another flag in the future.
Old New press release
Tomeka Reid: Tomeka Reid Quartet
As an accomplished composer and improviser, cellist Tomeka Reid, is an integral part of Chicago's creative music scene. In addition to being an educator, Reid is a versatile and tireless performer both in her hometown and beyond. Moreover her unique style graces the works of such luminaries as flutist Nicole Mitchell, multireed player Anthony Braxton as well as her own collaborative trio albums. The tense and thrilling Tomeka Reid Quartet is her first release as a leader.
The, mostly original, pieces bubble with a fiery intensity and a deep-seated lyricism. Despite their intriguingly complex texture there is ample room for individual expression. Reid crafts the captivating "Billy Bang's Bounce" from a heady mixture of boppish themes and languid, West African inspired motifs. Innovative powerhouse, guitarist Mary Halvorson, weaves an angular and enthralling improvisation around Reid's expectant reverberations. Reid's own furious solo brims with intelligence and flirts passionately with atonality. The stormy group play gracefully returns to the lilting head.
Driving this exciting music is drummer Tomas Fujiwara. His polyrhythmic flourishes are not only limited to the up-tempo percussive tunes such as "Samo Swing" but also the somber "Glass Light." Fujiwara's militaristic beats roar along bassist Jason Roebke's pulsating thuds and thumps. The duo creates a cinematic backdrop to Reid's undulating, melancholic phrases and Halvorson's wistfully sparkling strings. Reid and Halvorson's dialogue grows unfettered and delightfully dissonant. Roebke's crisp, clear bass lines and Fujiwara's percussive clusters contrast provocatively with Reid's wailing cello and Halvorson's urgently ringing guitar.
The quartet members also have superb camaraderie with one another. On the Latin tinged "Etoile" Reid and Halvorson engage in an eloquent conversation that percolates with intense emotion and inventive ideas. Roebke's bittersweet tones, during his time in the spotlight, reflect Reid's mellifluous and nostalgic melody. Fujiwara's rolling drums add a delectably dark undercurrent to the collective sound.
Reid's debut is a stimulating and mesmerizing work that showcases the superlative cellist's artistry at its best. Her exquisite instrumental prowess as well as her brilliant writing make this a singular record. This splendid and elegant freshman is just a glimpse of Reid's outstanding career.
Personnel: Tomeka Reid: cello; Mary Halvorson: guitar; Jason Roebke: bass; Tomas Fujiwara: drums.
Title: Tomeka Reid Quartet | Year Released: 2015 | Record Label: Thirsty Ear Recordings
Tomeka Reid on Giving Strings the Spotlight in Jazz
The cellist hosts the Chicago Jazz String Summit this weekend.
Tomeka Reid Quartet at ALL
Set 1 (Tomeka Reid, Mary Halvorson, Jason Roebke, Tomas Fujiwara)
On Thursday, October 31, 2019, the Tomeka Reid Quartet featuring award-winning cellist, composer, and arranger Tomeka Reid, guitarist Mary Halvorson, bassist Jason Roebke, and drummer Tomas Fujiwara, performed at ArtLitLab as part of their CD release tour for Old New. https://artlitlab.org/events/tomeka-r...
Concert: Tomeka Reid Quartet
This adventurous jazz quartet led by one of the rising stars of creative music, cellist Tomeka Reid, featured guitarist Mary Halvorson, bassist Jason Roebke, and Tomas Fujiwara, performing new music accompanied by live animation created on stage by artist Selina Trepp.
MEET THE PERFORMERS: VISITING ARTISTS
Tomeka Reid
https://ezhmag.com/tomeka-reids-cello-is-like-a-shield-and-a-weapon-hear-in-now-come-to-london/
Some artists seem to have the enviable skill of warping time; think of Shabaka Hutchings, Christian Scott, Anderson .Paak. With multiple simultaneous projects, it can feel like they have the superhuman power of dropping creative genius at the drop of a fedora. Add to that list Tomeka Reid. As well as co-leading her Internationally-renowned trio Hear In Now for the last decade, she’s a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians—the iconic organisation celebrating “great black music”. She’s part of Dee Alexander’s Evolution Ensemble, Nicole Mitchell’s Black Earth Ensemble/Strings, Mike Reed’s Loose Assembly, and has played with the iconic Art Ensemble Of Chicago.
“I moved to Chicago in 2000 to pursue a degree in classical cello”, says Tomeka, who grew up in Washington D.C. “Two years prior to that I met a great flute player by the name of Nicole Mitchell so when I moved I reconnected with her immediately and she had me in several of her projects. It was through this that I came to be a part of the Chicago music scene and got more interested in the Jazz culture there”.
Tomeka reflects on the city; “What’s great about the Chicago scene is that it champions and supports creativity, you don’t have to worry about fitting into a box. You really have the space to explore what ever direction that you want and there are many spaces to present those findings”. As with any artistic movement, community is at the epicentre. Of Chicago’s, Tomeka describes it as one of mutual gains, with “most people being eager to be on other people’s projects, workshopping each other’s music”.
One collective that Tomeka performs with is the avant-garde improvising group Art Ensemble Of Chicago. It was founded by saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell who is nothing short of a virtuosic living legend. Tickets for their shows sell-out quickly, with fans going night after night, knowing that each performance will be completely fresh. “How is what you’re going to play going to impact the music or push the music along?”, is a question she asks herself, when playing with the group. “It’s really awesome performing and working with Roscoe as he is such a titan in the music. Space and listening are two ideas that he really emphasises.”
With Hear In Now living thousands of miles apart from each other, space and listening is clearly something Tomeka carries into the creative process with her trio: “Living in different locales has presented some challenges but honestly, I think we get to perform quite a bit together”. Looking to the future, Hear In Now are “hoping to find a moment to record with Roscoe”. Before this year is out though, Hear In Now will be performing in London together as part of CHICAGOXLONDON. They’ll be supporting Chicago beat-scientist Makaya McCraven who is collaborating live with London artists (all TBA), Ashley Henry, who presents his brand new RE:Ensemble and DJ Lexus Blondin.
Hear in now #1
March 2, 2015Hear In Now #2
hear in now #3 (requiem for charlie haden)
hear in now #4
Circolo del Jazz Thelonious e Knulp presentano HEAR IN NOW con Silvia Bolognesi, contrabbasso Tomeka Reid, violoncello Mazz Swift, violino Trieste, Basilica di San Silvestro, 24 ottobre 2015 Audio di Willy Rossetti, riprese video di Giuseppe Vergara e Fausto Vilevich, montaggio di Fausto Vilevich.hear in now #5
hear in now #5
March 10, 2015http://www.freejazzblog.org/2016/02/tomeka-reid-quartet-st-thirsty-ear-2015.html
Tomeka Reid Quartet – s/t (Thirsty Ear, 2015) *****
Simply seeing the names of the musicians in this band made me do a double-take. Drummer Tomas Fujiwara, bassist Jason Roebke, guitarist Mary Halvorson are all in cellist Tomeka Reid's quartet?!? The various styles of these players coming together into one NYC-meets-Chicago supergroup works so well on paper it promises to be an absolute dream. But you know how supergroups turn out... Well screw your cynicism – and mine – because the debut recording from the Tomeka Reid Quartet is an absolute gem. Seriously, I have to pull back a little when writing about it or I'll be ending every other sentence with five exclamation points. Nobody wants to read that shit.
So what's so great about it? I'm going to list several reasons & try to contain myself.
- Like the music of Thelonious Monk, this music brings pure unadulterated joy into the world and makes the drudgery and gray awfulness of Midwestern life bearable. Thirty seconds into Dolphy's “17 West,” - the only non-Reid penned tune here - Reid and Halvorson are dueling, teasing, prodding.. “This is what you came to hear, right?” The clash is frenetic and joyously furious, setting the tone for everything to come. Even sullen, somber tracks like “Super Nova” sound like happy songs to me. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think it's got something to do with an acceptance of all of life, given the ideal balance of every nuance and note. Reid's vision is broad and all-encompassing. Every new sound is intuitively balanced by the introduction of its polar opposite. It is idealistic and inclusive. Who wouldn't want to inhabit this world?
- Mary Halvorson is the perfect foil for Reid; and never once does she steal the show. Mary's a rock star if jazz ever had one – ironically because she's the consummate team player. When she plays underneath Tomeka's gorgeous autumnal melody on “Etiole,” she combines the harmonic beauty of Jim Hall with precise rhythmic drops Keith Richards would envy. Subtle, original, and absolutely on point. Halvorson duels with Reid often, but it's playful and loose and elliptical. Sometimes, as on “Woodlawn,” the solos don't sound predetermined at all. They're simply part of a normal spontaneous conversation where two people start interrupting each other excitedly, then pull back and listen – or wait to talk, whichever option is more urgent at any particular time. Endlessly fascinating.
- Reid's compositions get stuck in your head – in the best way. The melodies are durable and smart. The sounds and influences are diverse as well, running from French cafe jazz to blues to a couple of pieces that sound a little like the otherworldly soundtracks Popol Vuh used to make for Herzog films. (Reid is no stranger to film music. She wrote and recorded a soundtrack to the 2014 documentary “Harry Who & The Chicago Imagists”.)
- Roebke and Fujiwara are a rock solid rhythm section who are also sensitive players. It's the balance thing again. It's the key to everything – and it starts here. If these two guys couldn't walk that line, none of this would work. They're kind of the unsung heroes of this disc, but that just proves how well they perform their jobs. Very rarely do these guys drop metered time, but when they do it's still perfectly balanced between pulse-time and impulse-time, and between themselves and the other two players.
Tomeka Reid Ensemble "Tokens" // Hyde Park Jazz Festival 2015
August 31, 2016
Tomeka Reid: "The Lone Wait"
(Composition and arrangement by Tomeka Reid)
June 1, 2016Make Jazz Fellow: Tomeka Reid (2012)
Tomeka Reid performing her original composition SaMo Swing, composed during her residency at 18th Street Arts Center. Reid is the 2012 recipient of 18th Street Arts Center's Make Jazz artist residency for jazz composers. Featuring Devin Hoff on bass, Jared Mattson on guitar, Najite Agindotan on drums Filmed and edited by Jessica Burton in celebration of International Jazz Day, 2013 Interview conducted by KUSC 91.5FM contributing reporter Tim Greiving. Hear Tomeka Reid's complete interview on KUSC's website under Arts Alive program, April 27, 2013.
Tomeka Reid and Ikue Mori Are 2022 MacArthur Fellows
Cellist/composer Reid and electronic musician Mori were two of 25 to receive "genius grants" this year
Two groundbreaking female improvisers, cellist Tomeka Reid and electronic musician Ikue Mori, were among the 25 people selected this year to receive fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation—known colloquially as “genius grants.”
A major force in the world of improvised music for the past decade, Reid has led her own groups and participated in several others as a member, including the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Artifacts trio with flutist Nicole Mitchell and percussionist Mike Reed. She also composes and arranges works for small and large ensembles with varied instrument combinations. In 2013, Reid founded the Chicago Jazz String Summit, an annual three-day event of workshops, master classes, and performances that celebrate stringed instruments’ unique contributions to the improvisational jazz sphere.
Mori first established herself as a musician in the late 1970s, when she became the drummer of the influential No Wave band DNA shortly after moving from her native Japan to New York City. In subsequent years she developed an intense interest in technology, performing initially with electronic percussion and eventually on laptops, which she now uses almost exclusively for both composition and performance. Her recent collaborators include pianist Satoko Fuji, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, and guitarist Fred Frith.
MacArthur Fellowships are five-year grants given, in the foundation’s words, “to individuals who show exceptional creativity in their work and the prospect for still more in the future.” Each of this year’s 25 fellows will receive $800,000 with no strings attached.
For more information about the MacArthur Fellowships, visit the foundation’s website.
2022 MacArthur Genius Grant
Tomeka Reid
Jazz Cellist and Composer | Class of 2022
Forging a unique jazz sound that draws from a range of musical traditions and expanding the expressive possibilities of the cello in improvised music.
Courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
https://stringsmagazine.com/jazz-cellist-tomeka-reid/
From the January-February 2023 issue of Strings magazine
Forging a unique jazz sound that draws from a range of musical traditions—including modes rooted in the African diaspora and avant-garde minimalism—and expanding the expressive possibilities of the cello in improvised music, Tomeka Reid is a jazz cellist, composer, and improviser who was awarded one of 25 MacArthur Fellowships for 2022. Given to individuals who show “exceptional creativity in their work and the prospect for still more in the future,” these five-year, $800,000 grants are paid out in equal quarterly installments with no strings attached.
In 2013, Reid founded the Chicago Jazz String Summit, an annual three-day event of workshops, master classes, and performances that celebrates stringed instruments’ unique contributions to the improvisational jazz sphere. The Tomeka Reid Quartet’s second album, Old New, released in 2019, includes a mix of original compositions and standards filtered through what’s been called a “post-bop, free jazz, minimalist lens.” During her composition process for the commissioned piece Tokens, she interviewed residents of a neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. Her Prospective Dwellers for string quartet explores the residents’ concerns that encroaching gentrification could dilute the neighborhood’s historical identity.
When Reid, currently improviser in residence at the Moers Festival in northwest Germany, Zoomed with me from Berlin, her eyes seemed to be sparkling with new opportunity.
Tomeka Reid - "Prospective Dwellers" (2016)
Most new Fellows learn of their award by phone. Where were you when you received your call?
I was in Chicago tending to business for my grandmother. I had had a long day dealing with some of her affairs, and I was exhausted and getting these weird phone calls. And then I saw this email and it was like, “Oh, I better call this person back. It seems important.”
What plans do you have for the grant?
I’ve been wanting to record a larger string group combining my Chicago and New York ensembles, and now it will be more “affordable” to do. I’m also going to take a little bit of time off. I have been really busy with teaching and playing and traveling and organizing, so it will be nice to have some breathing room to think about what’s next. I also have a book that I’m trying to work on that I thought I would have more time to work on in Moers, but I’ve been busy curating a lot of performances and things for the city. Just having some time to work on future projects—just time really.
A lot of what you’re about is defining what music means to you…
I started the cello when I was younger, but I didn’t really take lessons until later in high school. I used to really feel bad about that, but at the same time it made me work hard and practice a lot. I listened to different kinds of music too. As far as the jazz part, I didn’t grow up in the church, and then I didn’t grow up listening to classical music. I listened to punk rock and just felt kind of out of place. What’s been really awesome is that I don’t feel bad about that anymore. I can bring all of my experience and what I’ve learned to my playing. I don’t have to compartmentalize. I can bring all of the different kinds of music I’ve been exposed to and enjoy into my playing. I feel really blessed to be in situations where that’s OK.
You must love improvising on the cello…
I do. It’s fun. It’s like having a conversation, and depending on who you’re playing with or the instruments you’re playing with or the space you’re in, it might make you respond differently on your instrument. I find that discovery really interesting, and that’s actually how you develop your own language as you realize, “Oh, this sound works with that,” and you kind of log that into your mind, and then it becomes a part of your improvisational language.
The MacArthur Foundation describes its Fellows, in part, as “archivists reminding us of what should survive.”
I
think it relates to what I’m doing, because I’m championing the use of
the cello in improvised music settings of all kinds. It’s not that I’m
the first one to do this. Think of bass players like Sam Jones or Oscar
Pettiford or Doug Watkins who played cello and jazz. Think of cellists
like Calo Scott or Fred Katz, or Abdul Wadud, Diedre Murray. There are
other cellists that have done this, too, and I feel like I’m just a part
of that lineage of keeping the cello voice heard in jazz and
improvised, or creative, music settings.
You’ve written that, “What’s awesome as a cellist is that we can create a sound for ourselves.” How do bands use that sound?
My joke is, I think every band needs a cello. It’s got a special sound, and it’s very versatile. It can be the bass player, it can comp, it can function like a horn player or be soloistic. It can have all these different roles. But people don’t think about using the instrument. Still in their minds, a jazz band has drums, guitar, saxophone, maybe trombone, trumpet. They’re not thinking necessarily about the cello or even the violin all that often, even though the violin has had more of a prominent role in jazz and improvised settings. I’m just doing the work that has been done before me in carrying it forward and trying to encourage other people to see that it’s possible compositionally and as a performer.
Please tell me more about your book.
It’s about the women of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians that was started in 1965 in Chicago. I feel that a part of my work—besides championing improvisation and string music for particularly violin, viola, and cello—is celebrating my history and the legacies that I have been lucky to be a part of. So I’ve been a member of the AACM for over a decade now, and it’s a way for me to give back to this organization that has helped me so greatly in my career.
Who were your cello heroes growing up?
One of my big cello heroes was Abdul Wadud—he was very impactful. He just passed in August. We became good friends and that was cool. Before I got into jazz, Rostropovich was definitely my favorite. And Maurice Gendron. And everyone loves Jacqueline du Pré. But Rostropovich was really my guy. Moving into more improvised music, there are great, amazing cellists like Diedre Murray, Hank Roberts, Okkyung Lee, Akua Dixon, Fred Lonberg-Holm… there’s a ton.
TQC - Sequesterfest 6: Joe McPhee & Tomeka Reid - June 19, 2021
