Ron Reid's Liberty Quintet

Ron Reid is a bassist, steel drummer, arranger, composer, and educator. This Trinidad- born musician lives in Boston and is a graduate on Berklee College of Music and Tufts University. He is currently a professor in contemporary writing and production at Berklee where he teaches arranging, ensemble, and steel pan performance, as well as a liberal arts course on the music of the English-speaking Caribbean.

Reid was born in Belmont, Port-of-Spain and attended the Belmont Boys RC, Tranquility Boys’ School, and Trinity College. He first studied piano with Mrs. Ovita Creese and Majorie Padmore, however he began his professional career in 1977 as a bassist for the late Lord Kitchener’s Calypso Revue Tent. He has performed and recorded with an honor roll of calypso and soca artists including Lord Superior, Mighty Sparrow, Lord Melody, Relator, Mighty Shadow, Roy Cape, Black Stalin, Super Blue, Brother Resistance, Mighty Terror, David Rudder, Len ‘Boogsie’ Sharpe, and Ella Andall. He spent many years as bassist for Andre Tanker and the Mau Mau Drummers and the Repertory Dance Theatre. He has also composed music for several of Trinidad’s television programs—most notably Gayelle, Caribbean Eye, and The Rig—and has been musical director for the Trinidad Theatre Workshop’s productions of Derek Walcott’s Joker of Seville and Dream on Monkey Mountain at Boston’s Huntington Theatre, and well as the premiere production of Steel produced by the American Repertory Theatre.

As a sideman, Reid has performed and/or recorded with Randy Weston, Carmen Lundy, Dave Samuels’ Caribbean Jazz Project, Grace Kelly, Antonio Hart, David Williams’s J’Ouvert, Bill Harley, Gabrielle Goodman, Theron Shaw, and Othello Molineaux. His three recordings as a leader are Calypsoldier, Reid, Wright and be Happy and Precious Metals. Reid also performs with his Liberty Quintet, the Sunsteel Quintet— which has produced a series on calypso history in Boston’s elementary schools—the Precious Metals Project, Imagine Orchestra, and the Caribbean jazz ensemble Caribbo. Reid has received a handful of awards including the 2010 Berklee Urban Service Award, the 2016 Distinguished Hall of Fame Award from Trinity College, Trinidad (his beloved high school), and the 2022 Caribbean Foundation of Boston’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Award. He is a recent recipient of the 2023 Sunshine Award for his contributions to culture and music education.

For the Jazz at the Fens performance, Reid’s Liberty Quintet will include Domas Žeromskas on piano, Samuel Batista on saxes, Noah Allen on trumpet, and Lumanyano Mzi on drums.