“What I love about this group is that everyone is a leader, and everyone has their own unique improvising style. Everybody’s an improviser.”
Despite having trained in different genres, classical musical conservatory and punk rock, respectively, Tomeka Reid and Damon Locks forged a friendship in the Chicago music scene. Over the years, these two artists have incorporated improvisation into their work in unique ways. Finding themselves both part of the Walker’s 2023–24 Performing Arts season, Reid and Locks sat down to discuss how collaboration, community, and life experience continually informs and reforms their music.
Damon Locks: You know this, but not everyone reading this might know: you were my original idea as a member for Black Monument Ensemble.
Tomeka Reid: I know, right? Isn’t that funny?
DL: You, Nicole, and the percussionist I was working with at the time, Damien Thompson. We came so close, just the dates didn’t work.
TR: Learning that we’re both from D.C., and we both went to the same junior high school, but 10 years apart—that was kind of wild. It was these merging worlds for us: similar friend circle, similar appreciation for the different music worlds that we’re in. I was mostly focused with jazz and improvised music, and you were coming out of punk hardcore music. Everything’s expanded from there.
DL: What are you bringing to the Walker this season?
TR: 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 Binum 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. How about you?
Sat, Mar 2, 2024, 8 pm
McGuire Theater, Walker Art Center
Chicago-based cellist, composer, and MacArthur “Genius” Tomeka Reid performs with her full Stringtet—a 17-member improvising chamber orchestra featuring stellar jazz and classical players.
Presented by Walker Art Center in partnership with Liquid Music.