Wonderful Sound 3: Cooper-Moore, Bobby Zankel & Chad Taylor + Tropos

Presented in collaboration with Warriors of Wonderful Sound.

Wonderful Sound 3: Cooper-Moore, Bobby Zankel & Chad Taylor:

As a composer, performer, instrument builder/designer, storyteller, teacher, mentor, and organizer, Cooper-Moore has been a major catalyst in the world of creative music for over 40 years. As a child prodigy Cooper-Moore played piano in churches near his birthplace in the Piedmont region of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. His performance roots in the realm of avant jazz music date to the NYC Loft Jazz era in the early/mid-70s. His first fully committed jazz group was formed in 1970 – the collective trio Apogee with David S. Ware and drummer Marc Edwards. Sonny Rollins asked them to open for him at the Village Vanguard in 1973 and a studio recording of this group was made in 1977 - issued as Birth of a Being on hatHut under Ware’s name in 1979.

Following an evidently rather trying European tour with Ware, Beaver Harris, and Brian Smith in 1981, Cooper-Moore returned home and completely destroyed his piano, with a sledgehammer and fire in his backyard. He didn’t play piano again until some years after, instead focusing his energies from 1981-1985 on developing and implementing curriculum to teach children through music via the Head Start program.

Returning to New York in 1985, he spent a great part of his creative time working and performing with theater and dance productions, largely utilizing his hand-crafted instruments. It was not until the early 90s, when William Parker asked him to join his group In Order To Survive, that Cooper-Moore’s pianistic gifts were again regularly featured in the jazz context. In the early ‘aughts the group Triptych Myth was his own first regular working jazz group in decades and together they blazed some trails and released two albums. A destined creative re-union with David S. Ware in the Planetary Unknown quartet, the Digital Primitives trio with Assif Tsahar & Chad Taylor, and continued work with William Parker followed. Cooper-Moore’s creative life continues well-strong and unabated into the present day. He was the Lifetime Achievement Honoree at the 22nd iteration of Vision Festval, NYC on May 29, 2017.

Bobby Zankel began playing music at an early age, soon favoring the alto saxophone. After studying at the University of Wisconsin, he attended Berklee College Of Music, then went on to attain a BA degree from Empire State College (State University of New York). In the early 70s, he attracted favorable attention during a spell with Cecil Taylor’s Unit Core Ensemble. Concurrently, Zankel’s reputation spread within the adventurous New York loft scene owing to performances with Ray Anderson, Sunny Murray, William Parker and others. From 1975, Zankel became resident in Philadelphia where he raised his family meanwhile becoming a respected and in-demand sideman with many artists, notably those associated with the city’s thriving jazz scene. Groups he was with in these years, in Philadelphia and elsewhere, include the Hank Mobley -Sonny Gillete Quintet, Jymmie Merritt’s Forerunners, Odean Pope’s Saxophone Choir, and Ruth Naomi Floyd. He continued to work with Taylor, including visiting Europe. As a performer, Zankel delivers intricate virtuoso bop playing with an intensely emotional core. Zankel was also continuing with his studies, now with Dennis Sandole, becoming a skilled and significant composer. As leader and sideman he has appeared at numerous festivals. His compositions have been performed by Lester Bowie, Coles, Marilyn Crispell, Pope, Jamaaladeen Tacuma and others.

It’s hard to overstate Taylor’s contributions to improvised music over the past three decades. A composer, scholar and educator as well as a capaciously inventive percussionist now living in Philadelphia, Taylor is probably best known as co-founder of the Chicago Underground Duo with trumpeter Rob Mazurek (and the numerous Underground iterations that have spun off of that original partnership). A professional on the Chicago scene from the age of 16, he became a rhythmic muse for many of the most celebrated artists in improvised music, including Fred Anderson, Pharoah Sanders, Nicole Mitchell, Matana Roberts, Ken Vandermark, Darius Jones, James Brandon Lewis, Jaimie Branch, Derek Bailey, Marc Ribot, and Peter Brötzmann. He’s also led numerous acclaimed ensembles of his own, though never a trio quite like the one documented on The Daily Biological.

Born in 1973 in Tempe, Arizona, Taylor grew up in Chicago and was shaped by the city’s wide open improvisational ethic. He earned a BFA in jazz performance from the New School and an MFA from Rutgers University in jazz research and history. He’s forged deep creative alliances with a dazzling array of artists, including guitarist Jeff Parker, multi-instrumentalist Cooper-Moore, guitarist Marc Ribot, and bassist Eric Revis. He doesn’t have many releases under his own name since Taylor has tended to work in co-led or collective situations, but his compositions have been featured on dozens of albums.

Tropos:

Tropos is a collective ensemble of improviser-composers featuring four distinctive voices in Brooklyn’s creative music scene: Phillip Golub (piano), Ledah Finck (violin), Yuma Uesaka (clarinets), and Aaron Edgcomb (drums/percussion). Their peculiar instrumentation and collaborative approach are defining characteristics of their work as an ensemble. As recipients of Chamber Music America’s 2023 Ensemble Forward grant, Tropos spent a year developing their forthcoming album Switches (Endectomorph Music) under the mentorship of acclaimed saxophonist and composer Darius Jones. Tropos’ members call their aesthetic “outer-space chamber music” for the way their compositions push the boundaries between new music, jazz, noise, and beyond. "This collective of young composers and improvisers have built a metropolis that doesn’t feel like a destination for travelers unwilling to turn off GPS. A love of process and discovery seems to be driving this music. There are no selfie vibrations here, just a fearless commitment to compositional intention and to the development of Tropos’ collective improvisational language. In 1918, Le Corbusier—an architect, designer, painter, urban planner, and writer—befriended the Cubist painter Amédée Ozenfant, which led to the creation of the art movement Purism. Two principles of this movement are: art consists in the conception before anything else, and technique is only a tool, humbly at the service of the conception. Each compositional work on Switches embodies these two principles and what I believe makes this ensemble special. Listen to this music fearlessly and embrace a new metropolis." -Darius Jones

accessibility: two steps from street to venue.

Please note, entrance is via the side door on Arizona Street.