Tomeka Reid
Described as a “New Jazz Power Source” by the New York Times, cellist and composer Tomeka Reid has emerged as one of the most original, versatile, and curious musicians in Chicago’s bustling jazz and improvised music community over the last decade. Her distinctive melodic sensibility, always rooted in a strong sense of groove, has been featured in many distinguished ensembles over the years. Reid released her debut recording as a bandleader, Tomeka Reid Quartet, in 2015, 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.” In Spring 2024, Reid released the quartet’s 3rd album, 3+3, which All About Jazz called “as transportingly good as jazz gets."
Reid has been a key member of ensembles led by legendary reedists like Anthony Braxton and Roscoe Mitchell, as well as a younger generation of visionaries including flutist Nicole Mitchell, and drummer Mike Reed. She is also a member of Tomas Fujiwara’s 7 Poets Trio, Myra Melford’s Fire and Water, Dave Douglas’s Gifts Quintet, Craig Taborn Trio and Angelika Niescier’s Beyond Dragons. Reid has two other main compositional outlets, the Tomeka Reid Stringtet and a septet that began as a tribute to Duke Ellington’s 125th birthday in 2024. In 2013, Reid launched the first Chicago Jazz String Summit, a three-day international festival of cutting edge string players held in Chicago. From 2019 to 2021 Tomeka Reid received a teaching appointment at Mills College as the Darius Milhaud chair in composition. In 2022, she was the Artist in Residence for the Moers Jazz Festival, a Visiting Roth Scholar and visiting professor at Dartmouth College from 2023-25 and she received her doctorate in music from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2017. Tomeka is also a 2022 MacArthur Fellow and Herb Alpert awardee, a 2021 USA Fellow, and has received awards from the Foundation of the Contemporary Arts in 2019 and 3Arts in 2016.
Appears on:
OOYH 022: Tomas Fujiwara - Pith
OOYH 035: The Hemphill Stringtet Plays the Music of Julius Hemphill
OOYH 041: Tomeka Reid - dance! skip! hop!