Cellist and composer Tomeka Reid joins the podcast to discuss dance! skip! hop!, the fourth Tomeka Reid Quartet album, and why photographs of her grandmother's Wyoming life keep finding their way onto her record covers.

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Today, The Tonearm’s needle drops on cellist and composer Tomeka Reid.

Tomeka Reid has spent the last decade building one of the most distinctive voices in creative music. The New York Times called her a "New Jazz Power Source." She's a MacArthur Fellow, a founder of the Chicago Jazz String Summit, and a key collaborator with Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, and Craig Taborn, among many others.

Her quartet with guitarist Mary Halvorson, bassist Jason Roebke, and drummer Tomas Fujiwara just released dance! skip! hop! on Out of Your Head Records. It's their fourth album together, and it shows what twelve years of shared language sounds like: tight, playful, and willing to take chances. She also appears on Dream Archives, Craig Taborn's ECM debut with this instrumentation, recorded in New Haven, Connecticut, and out earlier this year.

We talked about the cello's role in jazz, how family history shapes her work, and what it means to lead a band that's been together long enough to surprise itself.

(The musical excerpts heard in the interview are from The Tomeka Reid Quartet's album dance! skip! hop!)

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00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:16 dance! skip! hop!: writing music for movement
00:02:29 The cello as a physical instrument
00:04:52 Musical athletes: body maintenance on tour
00:05:52 Twelve years with the quartet
00:07:37 Writing for specific voices
00:09:47 Shifting roles in the ensemble
00:12:03 What the cello offers in a jazz context
00:16:23 First encounter with the cello
00:20:15 Teamwork, belonging, and "the glue"
00:21:47 Family photographs and the album artwork
00:27:06 Images of Black joy and unencumbered life
00:29:44 "a(ways) for CC and CeCe"
00:35:14 Finding jazz through the AACM
00:39:30 Leading a band vs. playing as a side person
00:43:31 An honest look at graduate jazz programs
00:48:34 The Chicago Jazz String Summit

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Visit Tomeka Reid at → https://tomekareid.com
and follow her on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/cellisita
and Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/tomekacello

Purchase The Tomeka Reid Quartet's 'dance! skip! hop!' from Out Of Your Head Records → https://www.outofyourheadrecords.com/news/2025/12/5/pre-order-tomeka-reid-quartet-dance-skip-hop
Bandcamp → https://outofyourheadrecords.bandcamp.com/album/dance-skip-hop
or Qobuz → https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/album/dance-skip-hop-tomeka-reid/v46zfbrujdggb
and listen on your streaming platform of choice → https://outofyourheadrecords.lnk.to/danceskiphop

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