Described as a “New Jazz Power Source” by The New York Times, cellist and composer TOMEKA REID has emerged as one of the most original, versatile, and curious musicians in Chicago’s bustling jazz and improvised music community over the last decade. Her distinctive melodic sensibility, always rooted in a strong sense of groove, has been featured in many distinguished ensembles over the years. 

Reid released her debut recording as a bandleader in 2015 with the Tomeka Reid Quartet, vibrantly showcasing her improvisational acumen, dynamic arrangements, and compositional ability. The quartet’s second album, Old New, released in 2019 on Cuneiform Records, has been described as “fresh and transformative . . . striking out in bold, lyrical directions with plenty of Reid’s singularly elegant yet energetic and sharp-edged bow work.” In Spring 2024, Reid released the quartet’s 3rd album, 3+3, which All About Jazz calls “as transportingly good as jazz gets.” The quartet’s latest work, out earlier this year on Out of Your Head Records, is entitled dance! skip! hop!

In 2013, Reid launched the first Chicago Jazz String Summit, a three-day festival that brings together cutting-edge string players from around the world. In 2026, the summit saw its 12th iteration. Reid earned her doctorate in music from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2017 and has served as Darius Milhaud chair in composition at Mills College (2019-2021), Artist in Residence for the Moers Jazz Festival (2022), and Visiting Professor and Roth Scholar at Dartmouth College (2023-2025). She is a MacArthur Fellow (2022) and Herb Alpert awardee (2022) and USA Fellow (2022) and has received awards from the Foundation of the Contemporary Arts (2019) and 3Arts (2016).