The 15th Sydney International Women’s Jazz Festival delivered a sensational set by exciting US cellist and composer Tomeka Reid and her quartet at a gig organised by SIMA as part of the ACO’s Up Close intimate concert series.

Tomeka Reid. Portrait © Michael Jackson

Reid’s band, featuring progressive guitarist Mary Halvorson, bassist Jason Roebke and drummer Tomas Fujiwara, played a 60-minute bracket of songs from their recent fourth studio album Dance! Hop! Skip!

As a bonus there is a support act in Véronique Serret, one of Australia’s most in-demand violinists, showing one of her many sides with an opening solo set of songs from her new album Migrating Bird. Playing her six-string electric fiddle, augmented by field recordings of bird songs and gushing water, she holds the packed audience in the Neilson spellbound with her vocals and spoken verse, tape delays and pedal effects.

I urge you to check out this album with its contributions from Serret’s partner, William Barton, and production and mixing by Kim Moyes of the Presets. The five songs she chooses, delivered with an engaging blend of joy and charisma, make for the perfect curtain raiser to the American quartet’s much anticipated Australian debut before they appear in the Melbourne International Jazz Festival.

Halvorson is one of the most exciting of the current generation of jazz guitarists. She plays a Guild hollow body electric on which she melds her pure single note arco runs with pitch blending effects, at times lending a psychedelic edge to her work.

Reid, meanwhile, swaps between plucked bass riffs and bowed arpeggios, the ostinatos sometimes opening out into broad and powerfully melodic passages. Under the Aurora Sky is a highlight with a lazy lilt from Roebke’s gently probing bass lines and Fujiwara’s subtle brush work underpinning a beautiful duet between guitar and Reid’s yearning cello.

Fujiwara breaks out an explosive solo in the title track from the album, and Halvorson’s happy-go-lucky riffing with Reid on the irresistible A(ways) brings a smile to your face as well as a tap to your feet before she builds to a loopy bravura climax of electronic effects.

Oo Long! – actually the shortest of the five songs – is the most “out there” of the set with Reid and Roebke’s driving dual bass lines fuelling a high-octane mixture of fuzz guitar and shredding cello.

Reid’s compositions are layered and feature immaculate ensemble work interlaced with superb in-the-moment improv and seamless shifts of pace, rhythm and mood – Latin swing and jive-driven drumming one moment, free-form soloing and groove the next.

She emerged from the Chicago avant-jazz scene more than a decade ago, and as well as being a Doris Duke artist – one of the most prestigious of awards – she is also an educator with a strong classical background.

It all makes for a blazing talent with a band of equals performing music that deserves to live long in the memory.