Ron Reid

Ron Reid is a bassist, steel drummer, arranger, composer, and educator. This Trinidad-born musician lives in Boston, MA, and is a graduate of Berklee College of Music and Tufts University of Medford, MA. He is currently a Professor in Contemporary Writing and Production at Berklee College, Boston, where he teaches arranging, ensemble, steel pan performance, as well as a liberal arts elective on the Music of the English-Speaking Caribbean.  He began his teaching duties at Berklee in the summer of 1996.

Ron 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 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 Trinidad’s artists, including Lord Superior, Mighty Sparrow, Lord Melody, Relator, The Shadow, Black Stalin, Brother Valentino, Super Blue, Brother Resistance, Clive Zanda, Mighty Terror, David Rudder, Len ‘Boogsie’ Sharpe, and Ella Andall. He spent many years as a bassist for Andre Tanker and the Mau-Mau Drummers and the Repertory Dance Theatre. He has ‘acted’  in some of Banyan Television’ early productions as well as composed music for several of the company’s television programs—most notably, Gayelle, as well as Who the Cap Fits, Morral, Epiphany, Caribbean Eye and The Rig. Ron 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 of Cambridge MA.  

As a sideman, Ron has performed and/or recorded with Randy Weston, Carmen Lundy, the Caribbean Jazz Project, Grace Kelly, Antonio Hart, Lenora Helm-Hammonds, David Williams’ J’Ouvert, Bill Harley, Sweet Honey on the Rock, Gabrielle Goodman, Walter Beasley, Theron Shaw and Vaughnette Bigford. His three recordings as a leader are Calypsoldier, Reid, Wright and be Happy and Precious Metals. Ron also performs with his Liberty Quintet, the Precious Metals Project, and  the Sunsteel Quintet—which has produced a series on calypso history in Boston’s elementary schools. His other collaborative projects include the Imagine Orchestra and the Caribbean jazz ensemble,  Caribbo with Harvey Wirht, and Andy Narell. He has also the co-founder of Carib Parlor Notes in Brooklyn, NY, established in 2019 with the goal of producing intimate performances and conversations with Caribbean artists.

Ron has received a handful of awards including the 2010 Berklee Urban Service Award, the 2016 Distinguished Hall of Fame Award from Trinity College—his cherished high school—and the 2022 Caribbean Foundation of Boston’s Martin Luther King, Jr. award. He is also recipient of the 2023 Sunshine Award (NY) for his contributions to caribbean culture and music education and most recently the CAMMY award for education, mentorship and performance at the Cambridge Jazz Festival’s 10th anniversary in July of 2025.