Reggie Thomas, Matt Ulery, and Gregory Beyer

Reggie Thomas, Matt Ulery, and Gregory Beyer present jazz standards, João Gilberto, and more.

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Bios:
Reginald “Reggie” Thomas is Coordinator of the internationally recognized Northern Illinois University School of Music’s Jazz Studies program. He succeeds the esteemed jazz educator Ronald Carter, who retired after 20 years at NIU.
Thomas has performed internationally in Canada, Italy, Poland, Senegal, and England, and his recordings include work with Clay Jenkins, Kim Richmond, Clark Terry, and Mike Vax, as well as recordings as a leader and with his jazz vocalist wife, Mardra. Thomas is co-author with Wynton Marsalis and others on the important jazz teachers’ resource Teaching Music through Performance in Jazz (GIA Publications).
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Chicago based bassist/composer and bandleader, Matt Ulery, has developed an instantly recognizable sound. Known for his sweeping lyricism, unconventional phrase structures, expressionistic emotionalism, Ulery’s music, from small, diverse chamber ensembles to full orchestras, is informed by the entire spectrum of jazz, classical, rock, pop, and folk– specifically American, South American, Balkan, and other European folk styles. He has been performing for 23 years on upright, electric, and brass basses. For a decade, Ulery has been the leader of his own groups and frequent collaborator. Ulery has produced and released 8 albums of all original music under his name including three recent releases of critical acclaim, “By a Little Light,” “Wake an Echo,” and “In the Ivory,” on Dave Douglas’s Greenleaf Music record label in 2012-2014 and his latest, “Festival (2016),” and “Sifting Stars (2018)” on his own label, Woolgathering Records.
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Fulbright Scholar, composer, educator, and “prodigiously talented percussionist” (Chicago Classical Review), Gregory Beyer is a contemporary music specialist who blends the disciplines of orchestral, jazz, and world music into a singular artistic voice. He is the Director of Percussion Studies at Northern Illinois University and is a core member of two Chicago-based new music ensembles: Dal Niente and the CCCC’s Grossman Ensemble. Beyer is also Artistic Director of Arcomusical, an organization dedicated to the Afro-Brazilian berimbau. Arcomusical released its first album, MeiaMeia, in 2016 on Innova Recordings and has subsequently appeared on WNYC, WBEZ, and NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday. Arcomusical received a 2016 Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Grant to create the twenty-minute, four-movement “Roda” with composer Elliot Cole. “Roda” has received over two dozen performances and most recently was performed as a concerto with the Arizona State University Symphony Orchestra as “Roda Grande.” In March 2019 on National Sawdust Tracks, Arcomusical released its second album, Spinning in the Wheel.