I’m a tremendous admirer of cellist Tomeka Reid’s work, and have been for quite a few years at this point. She was one of the earliest guests on the Burning Ambulance podcast, in January 2018. I saw her perform with the Art Ensemble of Chicago in 2017, and with a large ensemble led by Taylor Ho Bynum in 2019. She was a founding member of trumpeter Jaimie Branch’s Fly Or Die quartet, and has been a key member of multiple groups led by flutist/composer Nicole Mitchell.

Reid is a leading member of several excellent groups, including Hear In Now (a trio with violinist Mazz Swift and bassist Silvia Bolognesi) and Artifacts (a trio with Mitchell and drummer Mike Reid), but her own quartet is probably the unit I’d recommend as a first stop for those unfamiliar with her work.

The self-titled debut by the Tomeka Reid Quartet, with guitarist Mary Halvorson, bassist Jason Roebke, and drummer Tomas Fujiwara, was released on Thirsty Ear in 2015. A follow-up, Old New, arrived four years later on Cuneiform. Now, just last week and with relatively little warning, there’s a third album, 3+3.

When I interviewed Reid, she said of the quartet, “I like in and out. So I like that mixture of, like, the craziest chaoticness over a foundation. When I think about music that excites me, I kind of like that juxtaposition or, you know, when I hear a great soloist, I love when they’re like — maybe something is playing in a groove, that then they, like, totally abandon that and then come back to it. So I guess I try to write music that reflects that…even though I love playing in free contexts and stuff, I do like melody and I like dancing, so I like grooves.”

There is a very strong sense of groove to the three pieces on 3+3. The first and last, “Exploring Outward/Funambulist Fever” and “Turning Inward/Sometimes You Just Have to Run With It,” are each more than 15 minutes long, and they begin with improvised sections that blur the lines between free jazz and chamber music, before melodies emerge with an organic sensitivity and gradualness, like a time-lapse video of a flower blooming. “Sauntering With Mr. Brown,” the middle track, is a little spikier, reminding me at times of the Fly Or Die band’s vamps and at other times of Halvorson’s small-group recordings.

Reid occasionally applies subtle electronics to her cello here, as a sort of mirror image of Halvorson’s use of delay and reverb on her guitar (there are times when the guitar sounds almost dubbed-out). This music shifts from intense, exploratory avant-gardism to joyous swing so smoothly you never notice the transitions happening, you’re just floating downstream when all of a sudden the water starts moving a little faster, and you slip your hand out of the raft and into the current just to feel it course over your fingers. This is a great band, and a great album.