Open Studio: Cooper Moore
Oct 19, 2015
Kids step to the rhythm with Cooper-Moore in the Hearst Artspace, October 2015. Photograph by Filip Wolak
On Saturday, October 3, kids and families joined musician and composer Cooper-Moore to explore the components of jazz music—improvisation, rhythm, and harmony—that influenced and inspired the work of artist Archibald Motley. Cooper-Moore has been a major catalyst in the world of jazz and creative music for over thirty years.
Kids and parents experiment with harmony, October 2015. Photograph by Filip Wolak
Kids and parents learned about harmony by swinging pendulums constructed with three carefully measured weights. Like musicians taking cues from each other, the participants worked together to let go of the pendulums at the same time. At first the pendulums moved at different paces, but after a while, they swung simultaneously and families could see how harmony works.
Cooper-Moore teaches families about beats and rhythm in the Hearst Artspace, October 2015. Photograph by Filip Wolak
Families learned how both European and African beats come together in jazz music by acting out those beats with their voices, then with their hands, and finally with their whole bodies as they moved around the room, stepping to the rhythm. Cooper-Moore explained that you have to move your whole body to the beat to understand the movements and gestures in Motley’s paintings, on view in the exhibition Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist.
Billie Rae Vinson, Coordinator of Family Programs commented: “Cooper-Moore’s ability to communicate ideas and emotions through sound and rhythm is amazing. For him, this is the way that Motley communicates in his paintings. Cooper-Moore asked families to improvise, to remember how to play, to be creative, and to experiment!”
Find out more about family programs here
By Dina Helal, Manager of Education Resources