Tomika Reed: Dance! Skips! jump! Review – An Early Contender for Jazz Album of the Year | jazz

ShCellist and composer Tomika Reed and her frequent guitar companion Mary Halvorson have collected so much praise for their genre-breaking, jazzy innovations over the past decade and a half that they don’t need to waste a moment to prove anything to anyone. These two fearless musicians played alongside the powerful and intelligent Anthony Braxton, and Reid was part of Chicago’s great institution of avant-garde jazz, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). But if they thought about extending a conciliatory hand to those who hate jazz, it might sound like this captivating and aptly named group.

This is the fourth release by Reed’s quartet, which includes Halvorson, bassist Jason Roepke and drummer Thomas Fujiwara. Over the course of five tracks and nearly 50 minutes, they race and cruise through swingers, fast moves, Latin and jazzy harmonies, burning hip-hop guitar, and sensual acoustic cello dreams.

Fujiwara’s accelerating brushes set up a churning guitar hook on the title track that infectiously sounds like some sort of upscale bebop, before Reed’s gorgeous cello playing kicks in with Halvorson composing the melody in the background. Then her simple improvisation is followed by a spontaneous dance in contrast to the tenderness between the two.

A(ways), a graceful lyric piece with a crisp guitar chord and bowed cello, slowly emerges from a faintly sinister guitar line against a bass-like cello vamp, and another interwoven Reed/Halvorson improvisation has an increasingly Latin character. Oh long! is a hypnotic repetition of a cello guitar hook over a samba-like beat that transitions into a wailing riff on fuzz guitar. Under the Aurora Sky is a lyrical, evocative meditation for cello that comes and goes around fragile guitar lines before the quartet emerges on a storm of abstract sounds. The closing “Silver Spring Fig Tree” develops a gentle melody against the patter of drums into a fast riff, bird-like chatter, and a softly retreating outro.

This is a dazzling contemporary band with broad appeal: 2026 should be the year for jazz to push this band out of the competition come December.

Also out this month

Patternmaster (ECM) can be the generic title for almost everything for the brilliant American saxophonist Mark Turner He does. His vaguely harmonized themes and chamber music restraint can suggest classic jazz riffs “Cold Birth” gliding over 21st-century polyrhythmic grooves, and this fine collection of originals perhaps has the edge over his brilliant 2022 album “Return from the Stars.”

On Time to Live (ACT), a talented Norwegian saxophonist and composer Marius Neset Partnered with his home country’s acclaimed Bergen big band and former Phronesis drum phenom Anton Eger, he creates a collection of churchy string sounds through which Nesset’s sax breathes meditatively, or dances around frenetic orchestral hooks, brass fanfare, and handclap grooves.

and a UK saxophonist/composer Tim Garland and longtime American piano owner and former student of Art Blakey Jeffrey Keizer Show how high the bar can reach for a super-fast improv conversation on the duo’s brilliant set Mezzo (Tim Garland/ECN Music).