Taborn/Reid/Smith

saturday, september 28

TIME: 5:15pm-6:15pm

VENUE: Logan Center Performance Hall. 915 east 60th st.

Taborn/reid/smith

Over a career stretching back more than twenty-five years, keyboardist Craig Taborn—a trusted colleague of Roscoe Mitchell, Chris Potter, William Parker, and Peter Evans, among others—has demonstrated a commitment to collective music-making, even when his was the name headlining the marquee. He’s applied his stylistic range, internal curiosity, and dazzling technical imagination to projects that tend to conjure unique, highly interactive ecosystems that privilege an ensemble approach over the soloist, although anyone who’s heard Taborn’s ravishing solo piano work knows what a phenomenal instrumentalist he is. This exciting new trio configuration, with drummer Ches Smith (whose own Bell Trio, with Mat Maneri, features Taborn) and cellist Tomeka Reid, explores a new set of groove-oriented compositions in which each musician twines melodic and rhythmic roles, harking back to the most hypnotic excursions of Sun Ra. Taborn doubles on acoustic and electric pianos, unleashing a spray of percussive clusters, glassy runs, and loop shapes, shadowed and pierced by Reid’s sinuous cello and Smith’s sparkling polyrhythms (and occasional glockenspiel melodies).

Tomeka Reid is a jazz cellist, composer, and improviser forging a unique jazz sound that draws from a range of musical traditions. Trained in the Western classical tradition, Reid is also fluent in musical modes rooted in the African diaspora and avant-garde minimalism. She employs extended techniques in her practice—attaching pencils or clips to the strings or making use of the percussive qualities of the body of the cello—to produce a rich and textured palette of sounds.

Reid is a versatile player, collaborator, and improviser. She participates in several musical groups as a member or bandleader. She also composes and arranges works for small and large ensembles with varied instrument combinations. Old New (2019), the Tomeka Reid Quartet's second album, includes a mix of original compositions and standards filtered through a post-bop, free jazz, minimalist lens. In several pieces, the drum and bass provide a propelling backdrop for the magnetic, improvisational dialog between the electric guitar and cello. Reid has performed as a member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, a decades-old musical collective that emerged from the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). With two other members of the ensemble, she spearheaded a recording of classic works by legends such as Roscoe Mitchell, Fred Anderson, and Muhal Richard Abrams. For Nicole Mitchell/Tomeka Reid/Mike Reed: Artifacts (2015), Reid created new arrangements of the works to fit the group’s unusual combination of flute, cello, and drums, bringing fresh perspectives to each track.

Originally from Sacramento, California, Ches Smith is a drummer, percussionist, and composer based in New York. He has collaborated on many scenes since the early 2000s and with a host of artists including Marc Ribot, Tim Berne, John Zorn, Darius Jones, David Torn, John Tchicai, Nels Cline, Mary Halvorson, Trevor Dunn, Terry Riley, Kris Davis, Dave Holland, Secret Chiefs 3, Xiu Xiu, Good for Cows, Theory of Ruin, and Mr. Bungle, among others.

As a bandleader, he has released nine records that feature his writing and ensemble curation, and he is a devout student of Haitian Vodou drums. He has performed in religious and folkloric contexts in New York and Haiti for the last decade.

The musicians:

Craig Taborn — piano, keyboard, electronics
Tomeka Reid — cello
Ches Smith — drums, percussion, electronics