OPTION: Rempis/Abrams/Reid

Recorded in the ESS garden on August 18, 2024

This collaborative trio featuring Dave Rempis, Joshua Abrams, and Tomeka Reid first performed in Poland as part of the then yearly Made in Chicago Festival that brought some of Chicago’s improvised music scene to Poznan every November. This is an extremely rare opportunity to hear this ensemble, whose voices intertwine seamlessly into one multi-headed unit.

About Dave Rempis
Saxophonist, improviser, and composer Dave Rempis has been an integral part of the thriving Chicago jazz and improvised music scene since 1997. With a background in ethnomusicology and African studies at Northwestern University, including a year spent at the University of Ghana, Rempis burst onto the creative music scene at the age of 22 when he was asked to join the now-legendary Chicago jazz outfit The Vandermark Five. This opportunity catapulted him to notoriety as he began to tour regularly throughout the US and Europe, an active schedule that he still maintains to the present day. At the same time, Rempis began to develop the many Chicago-based groups for which he’s currently known, including The Rempis Percussion Quartet, The Engines, Ballister, Kuzu, Rempis/Abrams/Ra + Baker, and longstanding duos with drummers Frank Rosaly and Tim Daisy.

About Joshua Abrams
Joshua Abrams is a composer, bassist, and improviser. His early formative musical experiences include performing in a chamber group conducted by Earle Brown, and busking on the streets of Philadelphia as an original member of The Roots. Since the mid-1990s, Abrams has been a key figure in Chicago's creative music communities and an international touring musician with artists across genres. In 2010, Abrams formed the project Natural Information Society (NIS), a group that creates long-form psychedelic environments that join the hypnotic qualities of the guimbri, a Gnawan lute, to a wide range of contemporary musics and methodologies including jazz, minimalism, and experimental rock.

About Tomeka Reid
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.

The OPTION series is curated by Ken Vandermark, Lily Finnegan, and Andrew Clinkman.ess.org/events