The following is an interview between jazz journalist Morgan Enos and pianist, composer, arranger, educator, and lecturer Eric Scott Reed. His new album, Out Late, featuring trumpeter Nicholas Payton, tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander, bassist Peter Washington, and drummer Joe Farnsworth, was released 16 May via Smoke Sessions Records. Links to purchase the album, and to Reed’s website, can be found at the end of this article.
Back in 2023, while promoting his album Black, Brown, and Blue, the long established pianist Eric Scott Reed came out as bisexual.
“It’s time for me to just go ahead and be completely authentic in every aspect of my life,” the native Philadelphian said in press materials. “That includes being more open about my sexuality and proactively moving into spaces connected with the LGBTQ+ community. Those aspects of my life were becoming more bold and broad, and I could no longer keep them on the margins.”
That revelation was more than personal; it sparked a creative renewal. Black, Brown, and Blue explored this topic through the lens of Black identity and blues tradition.
For its part, Out Late – consisting of seven original Reed compositions – refers both to the after-hours energy of the NYC jazz circuit and the pianist’s belated rapprochement with his true self. Read on for the full interview.
UK Jazz News: How’s your 2025 going so far?
Eric Scott Reed: I’m in downtown Los Angeles. So far, up and down. It’s been kind of crazy out here, because it started with those fires. It was really bad. So, I think we’re still just trying to recover from that. But also, the weather has been real weird – marine layers. It’s been kind of a s**t show, dude.
But generally, it’s been cool. I had a really wonderful show last night at LACMA [the Los Angeles County Museum of Art]. They have a free concert series on Fridays during the summer.
UKJN: Is it a lot of jazz?
ESR: Oh, yeah. The Los Angeles jazz scene in itself has much to be desired, but LA is just so big, and it’s very difficult to have a scene because there’s no area of concentration. Then, you have to deal with proximity, and driving. It always takes you 30 minutes to drive two miles.
UKJN: There’s no little club circuit that’s walking distance.
ESR: No, no, because L.A. is not a walking town, and people know this. For whatever reason, the culture just continues to maintain that energy. Which is fine. I’m not saying LA has to have a jazz culture. But the bottom line is, if Los Angeles wants a jazz culture, then they’re going to have to cultivate one.
There’s Sam’s First over by the airport, and that’s another 20 minutes from the World Stage, which is in Leimert Park. And then I believe the Blue Whale is going to reopen in Atwater Park. Catalina Bar and Grill is in Hollywood. So, if those are the four major spots and they’re nowhere near each other, how do you expect to have a scene?
UKJN: I’m a fan of straight-ahead jazz. I understand it can seem retrograde. I wonder if ingrained attitudes within that microculture can be backwards-looking.
ESR: I think these terms and these labels are all being redefined, and they can be freeing. Your generation – this current generation of people – are embracing their own identity, choosing terms like non-binary, or just completely eschewing gender identities whatsoever. I think the labels are important in terms of having agency and ownership of who you are.
By the same token, somebody else’s understanding of what that label might mean, based on a textbook definition, then becomes problematic. When it comes to terms like straight-ahead, and retrograde in particular – the idea of moving backward, or in an opposite direction – I don’t feel that way.
When I’m playing music, just because someone is younger than me doesn’t make them more contemporary than I am, because I am currently playing music right now. I am a contemporary artist.
UKJN: I agree that that’s how everyone should look at it. It’s just not the general consensus.
ESR: The general consensus about different generations. The general consensus about sex and sexuality. The general consensus about gender roles. Who cares?
UKJN: It’s a moot argument.
ESR: Yes, indeed. We’ve been living our truths. I don’t even wear suits that much. Sometimes I do; sometimes I don’t. I like a nice suit; I like a nice tie; I like a nice shirt with flex.
There’s definitely one thing we obviously can’t get around: the image around an idea. So, when you think of R&B, or when you think of pop, or when you think of jazz, you certainly have an image in your mind.
But, again: one of the things that I love about this generation is that they’re kind of tearing down the old guard ideas about what something means when you hear it. It doesn’t have to mean one thing; it can mean 30 things.
UKJN: Tell me about your legacy with Smoke and its previous incarnation, Augie’s.
ESR: I didn’t hang out at Augie’s a whole bunch back in my salad days, but I do remember being there a couple of times. Often because I was on the road a lot; that was part of my circuit.
In my early days in New York City, I was hanging with guys like [bassist] Dwayne Burno and [drummer] Gregory Hutchinson. All three of us were roommates in Brooklyn, back when Brooklyn wasn’t quite so tony and upscale.
What was that movie, [1996’s] Swingers, with Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn? It’s about a night of crashing parties and driving from place to place in Los Angeles, and that was how we did on the club scene in New York City.
Those were such innocent, wonderful times, because we really weren’t concerned about politics. We weren’t really into politics. We didn’t really understand the politics. We were just trying to be like our heroes: all the Blue Note guys, and Prestige folks, and Miles Davis. We were trying to imitate Miles and Trane – to look, dress, talk, and think like them. We had made jazz our entire personalities.
Obviously, that was not good. But there was a beautiful community, in the sense that we were all kind of on the same page in terms of what we were going after.
UKJN: Then what happened?
ESR: Then we all got gigs. Marc Carey and Taurus Mateen went off with Betty Carter. [Pianist] Geoff Keezer was with Art Blakey. I was playing with Freddie Hubbard and Joe Henderson. After I played with Wynton, Antonio Hart was playing with Roy Hargrove, and then he went off on his own.
Everybody had gigs. There were literally gigs for everybody, because a lot of the bebop generation of musicians were still alive, and they were hiring young musicians, passing on that music firsthand. We just kept doing that, but with no real plan in mind.
That’s one of the things I think we, Generation X, dropped the ball on. It was: Hey, we’re just out here playing music, and that’s what we’ll do, because that’s what we saw our heroes do.
They were just out here playing, playing, playing, and then they became old men and women. Some of them were dropped in on the bandstand, and we figured, “Well, that’s just our fate until times change.”
The world changed, the music changed, and then we had to start making plans. Cats got married; we had families. It was time to be more proactive and intentional about what our futures looked like, realising that most of us did not want to be old men still traveling the road 20, 30 weeks out of the year.
Not to mention that was no longer sustainable, going on those long tours year in and year out. So, we had to pivot. And then, of course, Covid made everybody pivot.
UKJN: I imagine this particular configuration of Smoke guys would fall together so naturally, like gravitational pull.
ESR: Sure. There are no coincidences as far as I’m concerned. [Smoke co-founder] Paul [Stache] and I were trying to put together a band, as we do annually, for Smoke’s Coltrane festival every January. [Trumpeter] Jeremy Pelt, [bassist] Dezron Douglas, [drummer] Willie Jones [III] — a whole bunch of us have done it together.
This particular week, this was a group that was available at the time. You can have a long list, but we’re not a long list. You have a short list of top players that you want to call from.
Getting us together at the same time actually took us two years to do, and then once we played, we were like, “Wow, we kind of dig this.” It wasn’t a surprise. But that particular aggregation was a unique one. Although there had been different pairings – I had worked with Peter and Joe a lot – the five of us had never been on the bandstand in that kind of setting.
I was getting ready to enter into a renegotiation with Smoke Sessions about what new record I was going to do, and I was trying to figure out how I was going to create something that was going to align with where I was at this phase in my life.
UKJN: Can you talk about the choice of material?
ESR: Oh, gosh, that’s always problematic. What am I going to record? What have I been rehearsing? Do I want to do standards? I’m at a place in my life where I definitely want to invest more in my individuality and singularity as an artist, and more in my composing.
But I’ve also sort of modified my composing and arranging style. It’s very different from when I was in my 20s and 30s, where I had every note written out, and I needed these breaks here, and everything needed to be clean, and I needed the horns to blend like this.
It worked until it no longer worked. Those records served me well, and they helped to establish me in the world of jazz. But I felt as though I was starting to hit a wall, and that was also what ignited the part of my journey that brought me out of the closet.
Because I didn’t feel emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically connected to life, people, and the world. And I knew the only way I was going to do that was to open the damn door, and walk out in truth.
