Cooper-Moore: Making Music Sustainable

    Cooper-Moore does it all. He builds instruments and he plays them too. Currently jamming at the age of 71 with no foreseeable end in sight, Moore will be performing at Krannert on Thursday at 7:30 PM. A wide array of instruments and sounds will be played/produced; his style ranges from jazz and blues to improvisational and gospel.

    I had the pleasure of seeing Cooper-Moore perform this Tuesday in UIUC’s very own Allen Hall through the guest-in-residence program. He performed playing a variety of instruments. One instrument appeared to be a half-string half-flute hybrid which utilized a violin bow to pluck the string. Moore strummed a beautiful song on his homemade eight dollar harp in which he had a charming story to accompany it. Moore was planting in his garden when suddenly his new hoe broke. Left only with a wooden stump, he knew that this broken piece was crying to be whole again. One day when Moore woke up, it hit him what he had to do to make the broken hoe into something splendid and that’s how the eight dollar harp came to be. I can assure you that Moore will have many more stories to tell, stories of ingenuity, resourcefulness, and reconstruction. So go to the free concert at the Krannert Center this Thursday, you have nothing to lose but yourself in his music and brilliance.

   

    A final question to chew on that Cooper-Moore pondered during his Tuesday show, “When the bow was first made millions of years ago, what do you think it was used as? A weapon or an instrument?”