Tomeka Reid Quartet

About

Tomeka Reid plays the cello like it was built for jazz grooves, which is rarer than it sounds. She came up through the Chicago jazz scene, a notoriously slippery world to pin down, and carved out a voice that draws on classical training and melodic delicacy without ever losing the pulse. Her quartet, which features guitarist Mary Halvorson, bassist Jason Roebke, and drummer Tomas Fujiwara, balances a respect for musical history with a genuine appetite for innovation. The group's album dance! skip! hop! gives you a good sense of what they're after: longer compositions that weave in melodic references tied to Reid's family from Wyoming, touching on her great grandmother, grandmother, and great aunt. The result sits somewhere between moving and joyful, which is harder to pull off than it sounds.