Tomeka Reid

Tomeka Reid (born 1977) is an American composer, improviser, cellist, curator, and teacher.

Reid has performed and recorded with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Nicole Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, the AACM Great Black Music Ensemble, Mike Reed's Loose Assembly, and Roscoe Mitchell. She leads the Tomeka Reid Quartet, with Tomas Fujiwara [de], Jason Roebke [de], and Mary Halvorson, and is co-leader of Hear In Now, a trio with Mazz Swift [de] and Silvia Bolognesi [it].

Reid founded and, as of 2026, still runs the now-annual Chicago Jazz String Summit and was named a 2017 "Chicago Jazz Hero" by the Jazz Journalists Association. In 2019, Reid was appointed Darius Milhaud Distinguished Visiting Professor at Mills College. She is a 2021 United States Artists Fellow and 2022 MacArthur Fellow.

Reid grew up outside of Washington, D.C., and in the 4th grade began playing cello at her elementary school in Silver Spring, Maryland. Reid attended a French immersion school, but spoke very little French; she attributes much of her early enthusiasm for cello to the allowance of English in music class. Reid could not afford additional cello instruction until high school: she briefly attended the Duke Ellington School of the Arts before dropping out due to the high cost of out-of-state enrollment, but assistance for low-income students enabled her to study at Levine School of Music in D.C.

After high school, Reid began studying classical music at the University of Maryland, where she reconnected with Saïs Kamalidiin, a professor she had met at the Duke Ellington School. Reid primarily studied classical music, but Kamalidiin introduced her to jazz performance and improvisation. Reid also met Nicole Mitchell as an undergraduate, during a summer spent in Chicago; Mitchell became another close mentor in improvised music, and Reid went on to perform on over ten albums with her, many as part of Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble and Black Earth Strings quartet. Reid continued to focus on classical music for the next several years after meeting Mitchell: she earned her Bachelor of Music in 2000, and then moved to Chicago, where she continued her studies in classical cello performance at DePaul University. She completed her Master of Music in 2002. After graduating, Reid began teaching at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where she co-directed the string program for seven years.

Reid became increasingly involved in the jazz community after moving to Chicago, and in 2009 she decided to more fully commit to the genre by beginning coursework toward a Doctor of Musical Arts in Jazz Studies.

Later that year Reid played a show at The Hideout in a special version of Mike Reed's Loose Assembly, with the quintet of Reed, Reid, Greg Ward, Jason Adasiewicz, and Joshua Abrams joined by Roscoe Mitchell. A recording of the performance was later released as the album Empathetic Parts. In 2010 Reid was also appointed Treasurer of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and played the Umbria Jazz Festival as part of the AACM Great Black Music Ensemble.

In 2011, Reid left her job as orchestra director at the Lab School, choosing to instead focus on her career as a musician. New Braxton House released Trillium E, the first studio recording of an Anthony Braxton opera, featuring the Tri-Centric Orchestra, which Reid had joined for the recording. The following year she was awarded a residency at the University of Chicago's Washington Park Arts Incubator and released her first album with Hear In Now, a co-led trio with Mazz Swift and Silvia Bolognesi.