Any time you see a band with a couple MacArthur Fellowship recipients in it, there’s a temptation to put the words “all” and “star” next to each other. Spell out the names of the musicians—Tomeka Reid on cello, Mary Halvorson on guitar, Tomas Fujiwara on drums and Jason Roebke on bass and cassette machines—and the impulse gets hard to resist. But let’s back up and pay attention to another word more relevant to this album’s merits: “band.”
The Tomeka Reid Quartet has been extant for more than a dozen years, and it was formed from pre-existing affiliations that go back even further. While it bears the name of just one member, who also happens to be the sole in-house composer of quartet material, the players share a rapport that’s hard to miss. You can hear it in the first seconds of the opening title tune, as they come together to make the tumbling melody flex and cohere. Hang around a few more, and you’ll hear not just precision, but affinity in the way they leave friend-sized holes in the music that allow each player to pop out of the ensemble sound and make a statement that not only allows you to appreciate the person who played it, but the way they collectively breathe life into Reid’s tunes.
In great bands, everyone has roles, and Reid fulfills several. Her compositions realize a personal ideal of string-based jazz that swings, but also slides easily into and out of passages of no-net free improvisation. Each of the five tunes on Dance! Skip! Hop! has a distinct character. “Oo Long!” is jittery, skeletal funk; “Under The Aurora Sky” uses an imploringly lyrical theme to launch some hallucinatory exchanges between electronically refracted guitar and cello; and “Silver Spring Fig Tree” folds a West African griot’s vibe into a baroque structure with empty spaces where the collective takes confident wing.
But this project would not be so surprising without Fujiwara’s understated coloration, Roebke’s unerring harmonic and rhythmic articulation or Halvorson’s gleefully slippery tone. All of the musicians put their skills at the service of the music, which just wouldn’t be the same if any one of them wasn’t there. What a record; what a band! [Out Of Your Head]
—Bill Meyer
