BEFORE I EVER LOVED YOU      :51

Cooper-Moore Solo Piano

 One of 15 little pieces that came to me during the Summer of 2004.

This was an attempt at spanning the inside and the outside way of playing.

I remember how surprised I was on listening back and thinking that I had been successful.

A LAMENT FOR TREES       5:04

Cooper-Moore Solo Diddley-Bow

This performance was in Reno Nevada, October 2008 during my Solo Tour of America;

two months on the road traveling by bus and train. I began in Brooklyn and traveled across the country to the west coast and back, taking out time to do a festival in Mexico City.

The diddley-bow is a one string instrument I play with sticks and a bow.

This one uses a D string from an upright bass tuned  to a concert C below the bass staff.

"A Lament for Trees" is a sad song in memory of how we humans have scarred the Earth.

It was created with a William Parker quote in mind, "Green things are our friends."

AFRO -AMERICAN FRAGMENTS      2:12

Words by © Langston Hughes

Cooper-Moore  voice and percussion

First performed in NYC at Fashion Moda the Summer of 1986.

Fashion Moda was a storefront art gallery located in the South Bronx, a first of its kind.

Juma Santos was helping to run things there and had begun a concert series on Saturday afternoons.

The performance included William Parker on bass, Michael Wimberly on percussion, Alan Michael on alto sax, with me on the instruments.

The performance was reviewed in The Sun.

The song originally was solo voice signed in American Sign Language.

Koo Dance performed it a year later with Nefetete Rashied signing.

AFRO AMERICAN FRAGMENTS

So long,

So far away

Is Africa.

Not even memories alive

Save those that history books create,

Save those that songs

Beat back into the blood--

Beat out of blood with words sad-sung

In strange un-Negro tongue--

So long,

So far away

Is Africa.

Subdued and time-lost

Are the drums--and yet

Through some vast mist of race

There comes this song

I do not understand,

This song of atavistic land,

Of bitter yearnings lost

Without a place--

So long,

So far away

Is Africa's

Dark face.

    Langston Hughes

DUOS - #3, #2, #1,    #3 – 6:02,  #2 – 4:10,  #1 – 7:08

CLAYTON THOMAS - Double Bass

COOPER-MOORE      - C Flute

Clayton came to the States from Sidney, Australia. I met him at the Knitting Factory after a Vision Festival performance 

with William Parker's trio - Daniel Carter, William  and me. 

He would come to hang out and one year studied with Peter Kowald for the summer.

This recording session is the first of two that we did. The next Summer we recorded again somewhere in Brooklyn with Clare Cooper on Harp, Clayton, and me playing flute again.

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH ME     2:56

Diddley-Bow and Voice

A comment on getting old.

AIN'T GONNA LET NOBODY TURN ME AROUND    5:04

My theme song. 

It was the recession of the 1990s. Times were hard. Arts budgets were being cut in half.

Our son was a baby. I had no job so every day found me down into the subway performing to make money.

I had  a spot on the N-R line in the music district below Broadway.

One day a young man came by and said that he had been hearing me everyday and asked if I had recorded.

I told him no and he offered to take me into his studio in a building right above where I was playing.

It was Andrew Halbreich, a.k.a.George Carver. He had just recently recorded the late Baba Olatunji in the studio

(possibly Tunji's last). 

That week I recorded mouth-bow, paper mache flute, horizontal hoe-handle harp, and ashimba.

For this piece I invited Michael Wimberly to play djembe drum.

This Ashimba was built May 1974 , 501 Canal Street, NYC.