Tomeka Reid

Jan 24 2020

Best of 2019 #45: Tomeka Reid Quartet – “Old New”

 

The words old and new may be given equal billing in the album’s title, but a cursory listen to the recording will reveal the album skews far more to the latter than former.  But that’s more of a measure of the levels of dissonance and tangled cadences that grace the Tomeka Reid Quartet’s 2019 release.  But all creativity is more than just the math of the medium’s characteristics and stats.  There’s the intent.  There’s the artist herself at the center of things, channeling everything inside, past, present and dreams of the future.  Reid is a musician of today.  Her music is going to reflect the diverse settings and kaleidoscopic influences, musical or otherwise, that shape the person, the cellist, who stepped into the recording studio.  Traditional music is a part of that composite.  The blues, swing, folk are as much a part of her as the oxygen she breathes.  And so they all emerge from Old New, in a new way, as Reid is today.  The blues manifest like a fond memory, and the swing is a photograph, vivid in its recall, timeless in its nature, but transformed by the undeniable passing of time.  This kind of experience, shared by the artist, is everything.

Your album personnel:  Tomeka Reid (cello), Mary Halvorson (guitar), Jason Roebke (bass), and Tomas Fujiwara (drums).

Released on Cuneiform Records.

Music from Chicago, IL.

I wrote about this album for The Bandcamp Daily.

Listen | Read more | Available at: Bandcamp – Amazon

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Dec 29 2019

Now up: October’s Best Jazz on Bandcamp recommendations

 

And here we go.  Let’s do some catch-up on notifications about my latest Best Jazz on Bandcamp recommendations posting on The Bandcamp Daily.  This monthly installment covers albums for October 2019.  There’s ten primary recommendations in total, plus some bonus recommendations, to boot.  There’s been no let-up on the deluge of new music in 2019, so if you were thinking about maybe settling into a prior month’s purchases, forget about it… you’ve got more excellent new music to discover.  I have been saying this same thing nearly every month, and every month it is true.  On that note, let’s begin.

Follow this LINK to read those recommendations and listen to music from each album.

Check out past recommendations by running through my contributor archives.

Have fun going through the list!

Cheers.

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Jan 20 2019

Best of 2018 #5: Makaya McCraven – “Universal Beings”

 

I’m not sure how much more I can say about this recording.  I originally included Makaya McCraven‘s Universal Beings in my Best Jazz on Bandcamp column, in which I explained how “Four concerts in four different cities [and] four casts of collaborators lead to four different perspectives on the expressionistic range of modern jazz.”  Later, for the Best Bandcamp Jazz in 2018 column, I added that his “cohesive vision of the strength and diversity of today’s talent pool… is a statement, and that statement is: This is jazz today.”  And then, finally, for its inclusion on The Best Albums of 2018, which included music for all genres, I summed up that “Universal Beings reveals the wealth of riches right there in front of us.  You don’t need to hold onto 1959; Makaya McCraven can give you today.”  McCraven captures four different takes on the modern jazz sound with four different ensembles performing in four different cities, further cementing the fact that this music is everywhere and that its potential for expression is limited only by the space on the planet and how that affects the space within artists heads and hearts and souls.

Released on International Anthem.

Music from Chicago, IL.

I wrote about this album for The Bandcamp Daily.

Available at:  Bandcamp | Amazon

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