“I like both places. I love things that swing, and I also really love open, spacey improv. I'm not going to be bashful about that,” says cellist, composer and improvisor Tomeka Reid in The Wire 485. A visionary artist with a deep sense of history, the MacArthur Fellow can go from bluesy melodies and funky vamps to modernist angularity and out there abstraction.

Raised in Maryland, Reid found her voice in the Chicago avant garde, performing at Fred Anderson’s legendary Velvet Lounge, and working with AACM members such as flautist Nicole Mitchell, drummer Mike Reed and vocalist Dee Alexander. Her playing has graced some of the most exciting creative music releases of recent years, from the late, great jaimie branch’s first Fly Or Die album to Ingrid Laubrock’s The Last Quiet Place, while her own projects include the brilliant Tomeka Reid Quartet, Artifacts with Mitchell and Reed, the string trio Hear And Now, and the improvising orchestra Stringtet. She is co-founder of Chicago String Summit, an annual event celebrating string players in jazz, experimental music and the diaspora.

Tomeka Reid Quartet
“Sauntering With Mr Brown”
From 3+3
(Cuneiform) 2024

The third album from Reid’s outstanding quartet explores extended suite-like forms, fluidly moving between pre-composed and open passages. “Sauntering With Mr Brown” begins with a dialogue between Reid’s descending pizzicato figures and Mary Halvorson’s bright electric guitar, with bassist Jason Roebke and drummer Tomas Fujiwara offering taut support. It all sets up a reflective melody, with gorgeous harmonising from arco cello and bass, before drifting into stormy electroacoustic textures, Reid’s delay saturated cello creating a hall of mirrors effect.

Tomeka Reid/Isidora Edwards/Elisabeth Coudoux
“Sound Behind The Voice”
From Reid​/​Edwards​/​Coudoux
(Relative Pitch) 2024

Reid has often spoken of the cello’s ability to switch roles, from bass to melodic lead, pizzicato to arco. That quality comes through abundantly in this improvised trio with fellow cellists Isidora Edwards and Elisabeth Coudoux, both of whom work between free improvisation and new music. Recorded live in 2021, the cellists channel their individual styles into remarkably cohesive spontaneous compositions. “Sound Behind The Voice” builds from a rugged bowing pattern, a watery spectrum of harmonic colours emerging over earthy bass tones.

Rempis/Reid/Abrams
“Schubertii”
From Allium
(Aerophonic) 2022

Allium, the second album from the Chicago chamber trio of Reid, saxophonist Dave Rempis and bassist Josh Abrams, demonstrates a mastery of spontaneous composition. Each piece emerges with a clarity of purpose and form. Reid kicks off “Schubertii” with tremulous arco figures, which Rempis immediately answers with trills. Abrams’s probing bass anchors abstract swoops and groans, then glancing moments of lyricism. The interplay between the string players is delicious, from arco chords to percussive thwacks of the bow.

Reid/Kitamura/Bynum/Morris
“Bending Skies”
From Geometry Of Trees
(Relative Pitch) 2022

“I like to joke we’re kind of like Steely Dan, we just do studio recordings,” says Reid of this free improvising quartet. Aiming to meet and record annually, the band have released three albums to date, with a fourth on the way. “Bending Skies” is a highlight of 2022’s The Geometry Of Trees, with Reid’s sighing arco glissandi establishing the form. Ho Bynum’s muted cornet maps out a melodic counterpoint, with Kitamura’s low alto vocals channelling an abstracted blues.

Joe McPhee & Tomeka Reid
“Juneteenth (Part 1)”
From Let Our Rejoicing Rise
(Corbett Vs Dempsey) 2022

Recorded live at Chicago’s Corbett Vs Dempsey gallery on 19 June 2021 – the first time Juneteenth was declared a national holiday in the US – Let Our Rejoicing Rise carries the weight of the occasion. Joe McPhee opens with a poetic reading that speaks to the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by a white policeman and offers a radically inclusive liberation call. Reid responds in a spirit of lamentation and defiance, her gorgeous arco melody intensified by double and triple stops, opening up an emotionally devastating dialogue with the saxophonist.

Tomeka Reid & Fred Lonberg-Holm
“Alla Mingus For La Bang”
From Eight Pieces For Two Cellos
(Corbett Vs Dempsey) 2022

Fred Lonberg-Holm was among the improvising cellists who inspired Reid when she was starting out in the Chicago creative music scene. For this duo set, recorded in 2013 and released nine years later, Reid and Lonberg-Holm present original compositions alongside pieces from the jazz cello repertoire. Reid’s “Alla Mingus For La Bang” pays homage to one string player via another: bassist Charles Mingus to violinist Billy Bang. Her rich melodies soar over Lonberg-Holm’s chordal accompaniment, echoes of blues and swing animating the melancholy air.

Artifacts
“Song For Helena”
From ...And Then There’s This
(Astral Spirits) 2021

Flautist Nicole Mitchell and drummer Mike Reed were key mentors to Reid, but they meet as equals in Artifacts. The trio’s first album celebrated the AACM, with compositions by the likes of Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell and Amina Claudine Myers, while its 2021 follow-up added their own compositions to the mix. As Reid notes, “We are AACM composers too.” Her “Song For Helena” is a beautiful ballad, the flute and cello moving in telepathic counterpoint before breaking into solos.

Alexander Hawkins & Tomeka Reid
“Shards And Constellations”
From Shards And Constellations
(Intakt) 2021

“I really like playing with Alex,” says Reid of the English pianist. Building on the rapport they developed in their trio with Nicole Mitchell, Shards And Constellations features free improvisations and a Leroy Jenkins tune alongside compositions collectively conceived with intricate textures and interplay. Alternately jagged and lyrical, the title track is a brilliant example of their approach, with sharp jabs of arco cello and piano opening into more elaborate forms that are continually deconstructed.

Hear In Now
“Prayer For Wadud”
From Not Living In Fear
(International Anthem) 2017

Reid played a major role in raising the profile of Abdul Wadud, honouring the cellist at the 2016 Chicago String Summit. A key collaborator with Julius Hemphill and Anthony Davis, Wadud passed in 2022. This gorgeous homage from Hear In Now’s 2017 album Not Living In Fear opens with Reid’s stately arco theme and double bassist Silvia Bolognesi’s counterpoint, lifted by violinist Mazz Swift. Halfway through, Reid shifts to pizzicato, improvising around a motif while Swift flows.

Read Stewart Smith’s interview with Reid in full in The Wire 485. Wire subscribers can also read the magazine online via the digital library of back issues.