Tomeka Reid at The Kennedy Center, 4/24/24
Besides reading all those unread books that I’ve had for years, in retirement I’ve also begun to travel to see music: the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Other Minds in San Francisco, Edgefest in Ann Arbor, Time: Spans in New York.
I took a quick trip to Washington DC to see jazz cellist, composer, and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Tomeka Reid
and her ensemble (9 musicians total, a nonet) perform at the Kennedy Center as part of its season long Ellington 125 celebration. I wasn’t sure what to expect. On the one hand, Tomeka is a member of the American Association of Creative Musicians(AACM) and is well known as an experimentalist and free jazz musician, as I know some of the other folks on stage to be, like Taylor Ho Bynum. On the other hand, the pieces commissioned tonight were for the Kennedy Center’s celebration of Ellington. On another hand, the pieces were actually co-commissioned by the Pierre Boulez Salle in Berlin. Boulez is one of the most difficult and challenging post WWII classical composers. On yet another hand or foot, the artistic director this season for jazz at the Kennedy Center is Jason Moran, a pianist who knows how to maneuver across the history of jazz. The playing could have been really conservative or really out there or some messy mixture of the two. Over the course of the 75 minute set, the pieces and the playing were a coherent, well-structured and integrated combination: Ellington’s tight, rhythmic cosmopolitan jazz that skirts with almost sounding classical mixed with regular bursts of free jazz that sounded like they grew out of Reid’s Ellingtonian structures. Great performance.
A couple of noteworthy things. This was an ensemble that favored the low end: double bass, cello, viola (not violin), trombone, tenor sax. Only the flute and cornet/flugelhorn played the upper end. They sounded a bit like a Henry Threadgill group, which often favor the lower end. Also, Taylor Ho Bynum is a great cornet/flugel player. He is amazing with mutes. I’ve always just thought of muting as a blocking of sound and breath, reducing the sound. Ho Bynum’s mutings we’re sensual in nuanced and fascinating ways (not strip club brassy(Hah!). I need to listen to Miles again and more Taylor Ho Bynum.