Tomeka Reid ’00 began her musical profession on the University of Maryland without even an instrument of her own.
But she improvised—a skill she’s turn out to be known for over the past twenty years—and now, her creativity and contributions to cello and jazz have been recognized by the MacArthur Foundation, which awards fellowships, colloquially generally known as “genius grants,” to 25 individuals every year.
“Reid is honoring jazz’s past while driving the sector forward and expanding the expressive possibilities of the cello in improvised music,” the MacArthur Foundation wrote in announcing the award this month.
She’s going to receive a no-strings-attached grant of $800,000, distributed over the following five years. For Reid, who has been on the road almost nonstop for the last decade, the funding offers her a likelihood to pause, then revisit a book and string collaborations which were on the back burner, after her year-long residency on the Moers Festival in Germany wraps up at the top of 2022.
“It’s an enormous honor,” said Reid. “There’s so many greats on the list: People doing amazing things within the sciences, in the humanities. Simply to be like, ‘Wow, people think that highly of me?’ That’s cool.”
The jazz cellist and composer is understood for her unorthodox approach, incorporating musical elements from the African diaspora in addition to unexpected items like pencils or clips to remodel the sound of her instrument. The Latest York Times in 2015 described her as “a melodic improviser with a natural, flowing sense of song and an experimenter who can create heat and grit with the feel of sound.”
No two of her performances are the identical—a trademark of her style.
“I like that you will have to remain present in this type of music; you’re not only interpreting notes on a page. It’s fresh and exciting, since you’re creating something on the spot and also you’re responding to others’ pitches and the audience,” Reid said.
The liberty Reid now has, each creatively and financially, would have been hard for her to assume as a freshman at UMD. She fell in love with the cello at her elementary school music program within the Maryland suburbs, but her family could never afford the luxurious of personal lessons or a cello, which usually costs 1000’s of dollars. But luckily, her UMD instructor Evelyn Elsing found her one at no cost, which Reid put to good use together with her “late-night crew” that practiced in Tawes Hall until security guards got here to kick them out. She built a powerful classical foundation, but then with the encouragement of mentor and ethnomusicologist Saïs Kamalidiin Ph.D. ’01, Reid made her first forays into jazz and non-Western music and commenced playing small gigs.
After graduating, she moved to Chicago for its unique music scene. “It was the primary place I saw five Black people in an orchestra!” said Reid. She pursued master’s and doctoral degrees from DePaul University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign while working as a band instructor at middle and high schools, in addition to at famed jazz clubs just like the HotHouse. But in 2011, she left the relative security of teaching to pursue performing full time.
“I grew up in a housing- and food-unstable way, so a part of me was like, ‘Why are you giving this up?’ But my heart was not where it needed to be,” she said. “I felt like a dried mushroom.”
Then in 2012, she got her first artistic residency in Santa Monica. “After three months in sunny California, taking tai chi on daily basis and writing music and never having to fret about money for the primary time, I felt like I’d been soaking in water and coming to life.”
She began getting offered more opportunities to play and collaborate, and created her own as well. In 2013, she established the Chicago Jazz String Summit to offer violin, viola and cellos, normally within the background of jazz shows, the possibility to headline. The festival also showcases string instruments from all over the world, corresponding to the masenqo of Ethiopia or the gayageum of Korea. Participants write and perform original music, and the weekend includes workshops and panels. The MacArthur funding will allow her to usher in more musicians and expand programming.
“Tomeka works harder than anyone I do know. Her devotion and energy is just above and beyond,” said Marlysse Simmons ’97, a pianist who befriended Reid because they were each “oddballs” with interests outside of classical music. “She was a late bloomer to cello—in strings, you’re disadvantaged if you happen to don’t have a parent making you begin while you’re 6 years old—but she never let it stop her.”
Now, Reid is looking forward to releasing her next album that she just recorded—the newest in a prolific discography—and he or she’s working on a book, in addition to recent music for the Chicago and Latest York string ensembles that she leads.
“I feel so grateful,” she said. “I’m at all times attempting to push myself. Now I can loosen up, breathe and dream up recent things.”