Program Notes for TOMEKA REID STRINGTET
Tomeka Reid Stringtet
March 2, 2024
McGuire Theater
Tomeka Reid Stringtet
Mikel Patrick Avery — Drums
Sam Bardfeld — Violin
Taylor Ho Bynum — Conductor
Sarah Bernstein — Violin
Silvia Bolognesi — Bass
Melanie Dyer — Viola
Tomas Fujiwara — Drums
Stephanie Griffin — Viola
Chris Hoffman — Cello
Adam Hopkins — Bass
Jason Kao Hwang — Viola
yuniya edi kwon — Violin
Fred Lonberg-Holm — Cello
Peter Maunu — Violin
Tomeka Reid — Cello
Tyler Rai — Producer/Tour Manager
The performance runs approximately 90 minutes with a 15 minute intermission.
Please join us at Walker’s Cityview Bar for a reception with the artists immediately following the performance.
Backstage food for the ensemble generously provided by the wonderful Gai Noi restaurant on Loring Park: https://www.gainoimpls.com/
Accessibility Notes
For more information about accessibility at the Walker, visit our Access page.
Program Note
In this yet to be titled work, I wanted to explore environments that offered more opportunities for collective improvisation and input from the incredible ensemble of players brought together for this performance, giving them more agency over the compositions. Prior performances of the Stringtet contained mostly tune based pieces, where there were moments for the instrumentalists to solo over structures and also, opportunities for spontaneous improvisation but I wanted more freedom for the players and as a lot of my own performance work deals with free improvisation. I wanted to explore this more fully with a larger string ensemble. The mood of the compositions reflect some of the experiences I have encountered over the past few years: loss, validation, marriage, anxiety and the challenge and beauty of maintaining hope. The Stringtet in both of its past iterations was a conductor-less ensemble, which presented challenges for me as a performer within the ensemble so I have enlisted the talents of Taylor Ho Bynum who is brilliant at working with creative ensembles that have varied instrumentation to help explore these new micro pieces.
The Stringtet will also present its second book of music composed in 2017 inspired by the visual art of my mother, Starr Page, whose paintings and drawings have always inspired me. When I was a youth, watching my mother do her art was where I saw her at her happiest.
— Tomeka Reid
Learn More
Recognizing their shared musical histories, we asked Tomeka Reid and Damon Locks—who will perform at the Walker with his Black Monument Ensemble later this spring—to interview each other for the Walker Reader. What ensued was a conversation about how collaboration, community, and life experience continually informs and reforms their music. In the following excerpt, Reid explains how she formed the Stringtet:
It is a chance for me to bring together two groups that formed in different places. When I was living in Chicago around 2015, I got an opportunity with the Hyde Park Jazz Festival to write some music for a string group. That birthed this Tet idea. I love strings, I love improvising, and I like working with other string players. It was a perfect opportunity to explore that.
When I moved to New York in 2016, I didn’t have the finances to bring the Chicago people to New York, so I started a New York version of the same group. In that case, I did music that was in response to some of my mother’s visual art. I’ve always wanted to record both of those works as well as possibly write a new book, and that is what I’ll be doing at the Walker. I feel really honored that I can combine both these groups.
It will be 16 pieces, and conductor Taylor Ho Bynum is going to be doing some of the conducting. There will be composed music, but then also moments [of] string improvisation, because what I love about this group is that everyone is a leader, and everyone has their own unique improvising style. Everybody’s an improviser. Oftentimes you can work with string players who may not be comfortable with improvising. I’m excited to have this whole band of string players that really want to get in there with the improvisation.
Artist Bios
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 grew up outside of Washington D.C., but her musical career began after moving to Chicago in 2000. Her work with Nicole Mitchell and various Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians-related groups proved influential. By focusing on developing her craft in countless improvisational contexts, Reid has achieved a stunning musical fluency. A 2022 MacArthur Fellow and Herb Alpert awardee and 2021 USA Fellow, Reid has received awards from the Foundation of the Arts (2019), 3Arts (2016) and received her doctorate in music from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2017.
Reid released her debut recording as a bandleader in 2015, with the Tomeka Reid Quartet, a vibrant showcase for the cellist’s improvisational acumen as well as her dynamic arrangements and compositional ability. The quartet’s second album, Old New, released in Oct 2019 on Cuneiform Records, has been described as “fresh and transformative—its songs striking out in bold, lyrical directions with plenty of Reid’s singularly elegant yet energetic and sharp-edged bow work.” Another reviewer noted that “while Reid’s compositional and technical gifts transcend jazz, they exemplify the tradition wondrously.”
Reid has been a key member of ensembles led by legendary reedists like Anthony Braxton (ZIM SEXTET) and Roscoe Mitchell (ROSCOE MITCHELL QUARTET, ART ENSEMBLE OF CHICAGO), as well as a younger generation of visionaries including flutist Nicole Mitchell (BLACK EARTH ENSEMBLE, ARTIFACTS), vocalist Dee Alexander (EVOLUTION ENSEMBLE), and drummer Mike Reed (LOOSE ASSEMBLY, LIVING BY LANTERNS, ARTIFACTS). She co-leads the adventurous string trio HEAR IN NOW, with violinist Mazz Swift and bassist Silvia Bolognesi, and in 2013 launched the first Chicago Jazz String Summit, a semi-annual three-day international festival of cutting edge string players held in Chicago. From 2019 to 2021 Tomeka Reid received a teaching appointment at Mills College as the Darius Milhaud chair in composition.
TAYLOR HO BYNUM is a musician, teacher, and writer, with a background including work in composition, performance, interdisciplinary collaboration, production, organizing, and advocacy. His expressionistic playing on cornet and other brass instruments, his expansive vision as composer and conductor, and his idiosyncratic improvisational approach have been documented on over twenty recordings as a bandleader and over a hundred as a sideperson. His past endeavors include his Acoustic Bicycle Tours (where he traveled to concerts solely by bike across thousands of miles) and his stewardship of Anthony Braxton’s Tri-Centric Foundation (which he served as executive director from 2010-2018, producing and performing on many major Braxton projects, including two operas and multiple festivals). Bynum has worked with other legendary figures such as Bill Dixon and Cecil Taylor and currently enjoys playing with friends in collective ensembles like his duo with Tomas Fujiwara, Illegal Crowns (with Fujiwara, Benoit Delbecq, and Mary Halvorson), and Geometry (with Kyoko Kitamura, Tomeka Reid, and Joe Morris), and as a sideperson in groups led by Fujiwara, Reid, Jim Hobbs, Bill Lowe, and William Parker, among others. His writings on music have been published in The New Yorker, The Baffler, Point of Departure and Sound American.
Now residing in Philadelphia, multidisciplinary artist MIKEL PATRICK AVERY had been actively working out of Chicago and New Orleans for the past 17 years. Established as a jazz drummer, he is commonly recognized for his orchestral and melodic style of drumming that often involves the use of unconventional “non-musical” objects. Adjacent to being a performing musician, Avery is a dedicated filmmaker, composer, photographer, designer, and educator, whose body of work invariably draws upon ideas of ‘unstructured-play’ commonly applied to learning environments found in early education.
In recent years, Avery has become an integral voice in varying ensembles, including Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra, Joshua Abrams’ Natural Information Society, The Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, and Theaster Gates’s Black Monks of Mississippi as well as leading several of his own projects, including 1/2 Size Piano Trio, Wazella, Sore Thumb, PARADE, and MPA ‘PLAY’.
Mikel has had the privilege to perform and exhibit either his own work or in accompaniment to others at a variety of venues and cultural institutions around the world. Most notably at, The Art Institute of Chicago, New Museum NYC, Art Basel (Switzerland), Hyde Park Jazz Festival, The Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Documenta, Drunk Lunch Gallery, Pitchfork Music Festival, Oto (London), & White Cube (London
Violinist SAM BARDFELD is a member of The Jazz Passengers and a frequent collaborator of Bruce Springsteen’s. He has worked as a sideman with a long list of jazz, pop, folk and experimental acts including Elvis Costello, John Zorn, Calexico, Anthony Braxton, Henry Butler, Kris Davis, Savion Glover, Debbie Harry, John Cale, Steven Bernstein, Ingrid Laubrock, Roy Nathanson, The String Trio of NY, The Red Clay Ramblers, Nancy Sinatra, Willie Colon, Dar Williams, Johnny Pacheco, and The Soldier String Quartet among others. Bardfeld’s latest recording, The Great Enthusiasms (BJUR, 2017), earned acclaim from top critics including Nate Chinen who called it “brilliantly odd and altogether lovely” (WBGO, 2017) and Bill Milkowski, who said he “combines a touch of Stuff Smith’s playfulness with a Charles Ives aesthetic – 4 Stars!” (Downbeat, 2017). His book, Latin Violin (Hal Leonard, 2002), is considered the authoritative work on the Afro-Cuban violin tradition. Bardfeld has also toured Europe multiple times with his own group. Some recent projects include performances in Chicago and Berlin with a string quartet with cellist Tomeka Reid devoted to the music of the late, great saxophonist Julius Hemphill; and a collaborative trio with legendary drummer Barry Altschul and bassist Joe Fonda.
SARAH BERNSTEIN is a New York-based violinist/composer whose work blurs the lines between innovative jazz, new chamber music, experimental pop and noise music. Over the course of ten albums as a leader and countless collaborations, she has garnered international acclaim for her multi-disciplinary performances and distinctive recordings. She leads the improvising string ensemble VEER Quartet, the avant-jazz Sarah Bernstein Quartet, the poetic minimalist duo Unearthish, and performs solo with heavily-processed voice/violin as Exolinger. Ongoing collaborations include her noise-electronic duo with drummer Kid Millions and the experimental synth-pop band Day So Far. She has placed in the DownBeat Magazine Critics Poll annually since 2015, winning “Rising Star Violinist” in 2020. She is originally from San Francisco, CA. http://sarahbernstein.com
SILVIA BOLOGNESI is a double bass player, composer and arranger. Graduated in double bass at the R.Franci Institute of Siena with Maestro Andrea Granai, perfecting with Maestro Alberto Bocini. She approached jazz studying at the Siena Jazz Accademy with Paolino dalla Porta, Furio di Castri and Ferruccio Spinetti. The most significant encounters in her musical training are those with William Parker, Muhal Richard Abrams, Lawrence “Butch” Morris, Roscoe Mitchell and Antony Braxton. Winner of the “Top Jazz 2010” by “Musica Jazz” as best new talent and in the same year winner of the “In Sound” trophy for double bass category. She leads several bands: Open Combo, Almond Tree, Xilo Ensemble, Ju-Ju Sounds, Fonterossa Open Orchestra, Young Shouts, Beast Friends. Since 2009 she is part of the international string trio Hear In Now with Tomeka Reid on cello and Mazz Swift on violin and vocals; with this trio they completed Roscoe Mitchell’s sextet in his Homage to John Coltrane in 2017. She’s part of the “Art Ensemble of Chicago 50th Anniversary” special project since 2017 and member of Roscoe Mitchell Quintet. In 2010 she founded her own label “Fonterossa Records”, hence the minifestival (since 2015) hosted by Pisa Jazz, “Fonterossa Day” of which she is artistic director. She’s the curator and conductor of Fonterossa Open Orchestra, creative orchestra based in Pisa since 2017. She teaches double bass and combo class at the Siena Jazz Academy and she’s jazz double bass teacher at Conservatorio Statale di Palermo. Since 2016 she is part of the “European exchange-Erasmus” program for the Conservatory of Maastricht (Holland), Tbilisi (Georgia), Riga (Latvia), Birmingham (UK). She runs workshops on Improvisation and “Conduction” since 2008. Detailed info on: www.silviabolognesimusic.com
MELANIE DYER studied viola/symphonic repertoire with William Lincer, Lee Yeingst, John Jake Kella and Naomi Fellows and studied viola performance at the University of Denver’s LaMont School of Music. She has performed with many notable musicians in Europe and the USA, including Sun Ra Arkestra under Marshall Allen, Henry Grimes, William Parker, Howard Johnson, Tomeka Reid, Joe Morris, Matana Roberts, James Brandon Lewis, Robert Dick, The Dead Lecturers, Heroes Are Gang Leaders, New Muse 4tet, and poets Randall Horton, Anne Waldman, Janice Lowe and Tyehimbe Jess.
Dyer founded WeFreeStrings, an improvising string/rhythm collective in 2011. From 2004 – 2013, she co-produced/hosted a series music performances, rehearsals, dialogues, recordings, lectures, one-act plays and films by artists/activists including Toaksin Ghosthorse, a performance of Robbie McCauley’s “Sally’s Rape”, and Israeli “refusniks.” Her events brought cultural luminaries, artists, eco-socialists, grassroots activists, working and under-employed people together.
Selected Discography includes WeFreeStrings Love In The Form Of Sacred Outrage (ESP-disk, 2022) , LeAutoRoiOgraphy: Heroes Are Gang Leaders (2022); The Music of William Parker: Migration of Silence Into & Out of the Tone World (2021), Blue Lotus: New Muse 4tet (2021), Dogon A.D. Revisited, Salim Washington (2018). Selected Awards: Chamber Music America, Jazz Road/South Arts, New Music USA, Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Herb Alpert Ragdale Prize.
Described as “a ubiquitous presence in the New York scene…an artist whose urbane writing is equal to his impressively nuanced drumming,” (Point of Departure) Brooklyn-based TOMAS FUJIWARA is an active player in some of the most exciting music of the current generation. He leads the bands Triple Double, 7 Poets Trio, and the Tomas Fujiwara Percussion Quartet; is a member of the collective trio Thumbscrew (with Mary Halvorson and Michael Formanek); has a collaborative duo with Taylor Ho Bynum; and engages in a diversity of creative work with Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Mary Halvorson, Tomeka Reid, Matana Roberts, Taylor Ho Bynum, Amir ElSaffar, Benoit Delbecq, and many others. In 2021, he won the Downbeat Critics Poll for Rising Star Drummer, and premiered two suites of new music as part of his Roulette Residency: “You Don’t Have to Try” (with Meshell Ndegeocello) and “Shizuko.” His most recent work is “Dream Up,” a suite for percussion quartet, commissioned by NYSCA and Roulette Intermedium. Tomas Fujiwara’s 7 Poets Trio (with Patricia Brennan and Tomeka Reid) will release its second album in September 2023 on Out Of Your Head Records. “Drummer Tomas Fujiwara works with rhythm as a pliable substance, solid but ever shifting. His style is forward-driving but rarely blunt or aggressive, and never random. He has a way of spreading out the center of a pulse while setting up a rigorous scaffolding of restraint…A conception of the drum set as a full-canvas instrument, almost orchestral in its scope.” (New York Times)
STEPHANIE GRIFFIN is an innovative composer and violist with an eclectic musical vision. Born in Canada and based in New York City, her musical adventures have taken her to Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, England, Ireland, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy, and Mongolia. Stephanie founded the Momenta Quartet in 2004, and is a member of the Argento Chamber Ensemble and Continuum; principal violist of the Princeton Symphony; and viola faculty at Hunter College. She was a 2019 Composition Fellow at the Instituto Sacatar in Brazil, and has received prestigious composition fellowships and commissions from the Jerome Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and the Bronx Council on the Arts. As an improviser she has performed with Henry Threadgill, Wadada Leo Smith, Butch Morris and Adam Rudolph, among others, and was a 2014 Fellow and 2021 Alumna-in-Residence at Music Omi. She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from The Juilliard School where she studied with Samuel Rhodes, and has recorded for Tzadik, Innova, Naxos, Aeon, New World and Albany records. Since August 2020, she has served as the Executive Director of ACMP, a nonprofit organization providing grants and services for amateur chamber music worldwide.
CHRISTOPHER HOFFMAN is a cellist, composer, producer and filmmaker. He has worked with Henry Threadgill, Martin Scorsese, Anat Cohen, Yoko Ono, Anna Webber, Butch Morris, Michael Pitt, Kenny Warren & Tony Malaby among many others.
“ADAM HOPKINS is one of the few talents with the vision to make jazz directed at the current and future generations, not the past ones.” —Something Else Reviews. Hopkins is a bassist and composer born and raised in Baltimore MD, relocated to Brooklyn NY in 2011, and moved to Richmond in early 2019. He has extensive experience performing jazz and improvised music and has played with professional orchestras in Maryland, Virginia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and the DC metro area. His debut album Crickets has received international acclaim from a variety of sources, most notably ranking as the #2 Debut Album in the 2018 NPR Jazz Critics Poll. Adam was also named the #2 Newcomer Musician for 2018 in the International Critics Poll organized by El Intruso. Crickets was the first release on Hopkins’ Out Of Your Head Records, an artist-run record label dedicated to creative music and visual art in limited runs. He has toured as a member of John Hollenbeck’s Claudia Quintet, been a side person with Henry Threadgill, and has recorded and/or performed regularly with Webber/Morris Big Band, Tomeka Reid, Kate Gentile Mannequins, Scott Clark’s Dawn & Dusk, Anna Webber’s Rectangles, Christopher Hoffman Trio, Ideal Bread, among others. Adam has studied double bass with many great performers and teachers of the instrument, including Michael Formanek, Jeffrey Weisner, Jack Budrow, Rodney Whitaker, and Sam Cross and additional studies with Drew Gress and Gary Thomas.
JASON KAO HWANG (violin/viola) explores the vibrations and language of his history. His most recent releases, Uncharted Faith, Conjure, and the Human Rites Trio have received critical acclaim. In 2020, the El Intruso International Critics Poll voted him #1 for Violin/Viola. The 2012 Downbeat Jazz Critics’ Poll voted Mr. Hwang as Rising Star for Violin. Mr. Hwang is the recipient of a 2023 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He has also received support from NEA, Rockefeller Foundation, US Artists International and others. He has worked with William Parker, Butch Morris, Reggie Workman, Joelle Leandre, Mathew Shipp, 75 Dollar Bill, Karl Berger, Pauline Oliveros, Taylor Ho Bynum, and many others.
YUNIYA EDI KWON (b. 1989) is a violinist, vocalist, poet, and interdisciplinary performance artist based in Lenapehoking, or New York City. Her practice connects composition, improvisation, movement, and ceremony to explore transformation & transgression, ritual practice as a tool to queer space & lineage, and the use of mythology to connect, obscure, and reveal. As a composer-performer and improviser, she is inspired by Korean folk timbres & inflections, textures & movement from natural environments, and American experimentalism as shaped by the AACM. In addition to an evolving, interdisciplinary solo practice, she performs and collaborates with artists of diverse disciplines, including The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Senga Nengudi, Holland Andrews, Tomeka Reid, International Contemporary Ensemble, Kenneth Tam, Isabel Crespo Pardo, Moor Mother, and Degenerate Art Ensemble. She has performed alongside Roscoe Mitchell, Mary Halvorson, Nicole Mitchell, Cory Smythe, Du Yun, Henry Threadgill, Susan Alcorn, Carla Kihlstedt, Jessika Kenney, Lesley Mok, Satomi Matsuzaki, and others. In 2023, eddy founded SUN HAN GUILD, a sound and performance collective with composer-improvisers Laura Cocks, Jessie Cox, DoYeon Kim, and Lester St. Louis. She is a recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Robert Rauschenberg Award in Music/Sound, an Arts Fellow at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, a Johnson Fellow at Americans for the Arts, and a United States Artists Ford Fellow. www.eddykwon.net
Obsessed with making noises since infancy FRED LONBERG-HOLM is a musician / free improviser currently living in Kingston NY. Primarily a cellist, he has also recorded and performed on tenor guitar and trumpet. Recent collaborators include Jessica Ackerley, Farida Amadou, Michael Bisio, Ben Bennett, Jaimie Branch, Peter Brotzmann, Simon Camatta, John Edwards, Sandy Ewen, Helena Espvall, Frode Gjerstad, Kirk Knuffke, Mat Maneri, Joe McPhee, Miguel Mira, Abdul Moimeme, Paal Nilssen-Love, Dave Rempis and Ben Vida to name a few.
While mostly focusing on free improvising in “ad-hoc” situations, current ongoing projects include Ballister, Survival Unit III, Camatta/Lonberg-Holm, The Flying Cellos, the Lightbox Orchestra, Party Knullers and Stirrup. Past ensembles of note include the Peter Brotzmann Chicago 10tet, Vandermark 5, Anthony Coleman’s Selfhaters, Terminal 4 and the Valentine Trio.
A transplant from the Los Angeles music scene, guitarist/violinist PETER MAUNU has toured, performed and recorded with a long list of diverse musicians including Charles Lloyd, Jean-Luc Ponty, Bobby McFerrin, Tony Williams, Billy Cobham, Charlie Haden, Archie Shepp, and Grace Slick. As the guitarist on the Arsenio Hall Show, he performed nightly with legends like Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Ringo Starr, Madonna, Ray Charles, NWA, Public Enemy, and many more. Additionally, Peter contributed to the soundtracks of film scores including Crash, Bobby, Food Inc., and tv shows Chicago Hope, Arrested Development and CSI New York. Since relocating to Chicago, he has performed and recorded with improvisers Jack Wright, Gerrit Hatcher, Julian Kirshner, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Zoots Houston, Dave Rempis, Tim Daisy, Michael Zerang, Mars Williams, Jim Baker, Carol Genetti, Tomeka Reid, Katherine Young, Jason Roebke, Avreeyal Ra, Ed Wilkerson Jr., dancer Ayako Kato and many others. In addition, he founded, co-curates and performs at Splice Series, a bimonthly improvisation series at the Beat Kitchen in Chicago.
Living Land Acknowledgement
The McGuire Theater and Walker Art Center are located on the contemporary, traditional, and ancestral homelands of the Dakota people. Situated near Bde Maka Ska and Wíta Tópa Bde, or Lake of the Isles, on what was once an expanse of marshland and meadow, this site holds meaning for Dakota, Ojibwe, and Indigenous people from other Native nations, who still live in the community today.
We acknowledge the discrimination and violence inflicted on Indigenous peoples in Minnesota and the Americas, including forced removal from ancestral lands, the deliberate destruction of communities and culture, deceptive treaties, war, and genocide. We recognize that, as a museum in the United States, we have a colonial history and are beneficiaries of this land and its resources. We acknowledge the history of Native displacement that allowed for the founding of the Walker. By remembering this dark past, we recognize its continuing harm in the present and resolve to work toward reconciliation, systemic change, and healing in support of Dakota people and the land itself.
We honor Native people and their relatives, past, present, and future. As a cultural organization, the Walker works toward building relationships with Native communities through artistic and educational programs, curatorial and community partnerships, and the presentation of new work.
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