Catching up with composer/performer Tomeka Reid

My profile of the genre-bending cellist is now on newsstands

My profile of the cellist Tomeka Reid, a tireless creative force in modern music, appears in Zoning, the latest issue of the quarterly music journal from We Jazz Records. There’s no online version of the mag as yet, but you can order a beautiful perfect-bound print copy here.

This issue, number 13, brings another hefty helping of jazz goodness, 128 pages in all. Must-reads include Debra Richards’ insightful review of Meshell Ndegeocello’s No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin, a tribute from the reed and wind musician Mats Gustafsson to the cassette-only record label Fringe Benefits, scintillating surveys of 2024 music festivals in Portugal, Germany, Finland, Estonia, and elsewhere, and Anton Spice’s cover story, a fresh and nuanced appraisal of the career of the pianist, composer, and arranger Mary Lou Williams.

Here’s a segment from my conversation with Reid that didn’t make it into print, a “bonus track” if you will, lightly edited for concision. It’s a glimpse of how the effects of covid-19 rippled through successive years in the life of one musician. It also speaks to Reid’s abiding appreciation for histories, the importance of acknowledging forebears—in life no less than music.

“That spring of 2020 I was hoping to do some touring, but then we had the pandemic. I was playing with the Art Ensemble of Chicago; my record Old New came out; I got this new position at Mills College. When things shut down I was living in New York and wanting to move uptown to Washington Heights. But there’s this pandemic! I asked my boyfriend, now husband [the author and educator David P. Brown], ‘Can I just stay with you for two weeks?’ But of course that became several months.

“Then I got this phone call right before I went online for a Zoom panel: ‘You need to come get your grandmother or we’re putting her in a state home in Wyoming.’ My grandmother was this beautiful dark-skinned Black woman who was one of, like, four Black families that lived in southwest Wyoming. She grew up there, in a mining town. And it’s a red state, so I needed to go get my grandmother. But then I had to get my stuff from New York because it’s clear I’m not moving to Washington Heights, I’m moving back to Chicago. All of a sudden I had all this responsibility. Between getting her paperwork done, taking her to doctor appointments, and emergency trips to the hospital, I couldn’t do a lot of music. So ’22 was just a crazy year of juggling care for her, trying to take care of myself, living in Germany as artist-in-residence with the Moers Festival, having my honeymoon….” (“We got married on Zoom in 2020,” Reid backfills, adding: “I love love. It’s so great.”)

“We did our honeymoon, then a bunch of touring, still going back and forth, checking on my grandmother and trying to not feel immensely guilty. I kept thinking, ‘I think Grandma would want me to do this.’ When she had her lucid moments she felt guilty about me taking care of her. But I would say that although the pandemic was tragic in so many aspects, it was kind of a blessing for us. It was just so beautiful to take care of my grandmother, even though it was probably also the hardest thing I ever did in my life.”

A forthcoming project Reid discusses in our interview will see light of day next month, The Hemphill Stringtet Plays the Music of Julius Hemphill. Performed by a traditional quartet (violins, viola, cello) organized by Reid, the album presents four pieces by the saxophonist and composer Julius Hemphill (1938–1995), including the rarely performed Mingus Gold, arrangements of three pieces by Charles Mingus.