Cooper-Moore has been active on the creative music scene for over 30 years. Recordings with artists such as David S. Ware, William Parker, and especially Triptych Myth showcased his considerable skills as a pianist. While this is the source of his greatest notoriety amongst jazzbos, he has also simultaneously developed instruments of his own design and occasionally invention.  Inclusion of some of these instruments with the large ensembles of William Parker, Bill Cole, and Butch Morris gave notice to the jazz world that piano is just one part of a much greater whole that is Cooper-Moore's music.

A whole lot more of it comes together in Cooper-Moore’s solo performances, which are remarkable displays of multi-instrumental virtuosity and showmanship. He plays one beautiful handmade instrument after another in imaginative and exciting ways, all the while offhandedly bantering with the audience and offering tall tales that can be disarmingly personal and/or hilarious. The palette and emotional range of the music is quite broad, incorporating free improvisation, composed tunes, and the nether regions in between.

The first commercially available documentation of this music was issued in 2004 by 50 Miles of Elbow Room as a quintuple 7" set of solo recordings wherein Cooper-Moore played a different instrument on each side of each record. The tracks include a diddley-bo lament, a mouthbow hymn, a high energy piano improvisation, an effects-laden banjo romp, the discombobulating sound of the twanger, and plenty more. Minus the story of Reverend Love and the overdubbing on “The Death Queen,” each side of each record features a solo performance on a different instrument. Among the recording locales were a compost heap on Ward’s Island, on a footbridge, at a gig in Bordeaux, on his fire escape, and other places.  Housed in a cedar wood box and pressed in an edition of 300, this went out-of-print rather quickly. 

Cooper-Moore’s fall 2008 tour of the USA presented a fine excuse for a CD reissue of this material: a silkscreened, hand-numbered edition of 500 with an accompanying 20-page booklet.  Co-released with AUM Fidelity, it is available only here, at AUM, and from Cooper-Moore at his gigs.  Some reviews of the original release:

“Cooper-Moore is an astounding musician who has recorded far less than he ought to have over the years, and who gets consigned to a few small dustbins when he's consigned at all.  He is best known for his piano work with William Parker, and to a lesser extent, with David Ware and Susie Ibarra. But he is probably most interesting as a solo performer, improvising and playing on the instruments he builds from the junk he finds around New York City.  The box set “Cooper-Moore” (50 Miles of Elbow Room 5x7”) is packed in a nice cedar box, and has ten examples of him performing on various instruments - diddley bo, horizontal hoe-handle harp, ashimba, twanger, piano, mouth-bow, three-stringed fretless banjo, and so on. It is amazing stuff - really superb, powerful music rising from a variety of unknown traditions, culminating in a fantastic aerial tongue-wrestle that brings together a blinding array of free-cosmo-primitive ideologies and strategies.  The set is pressed up in an edition of 300 as the fourth issue of Adam Lore's 50 Miles of Elbow Room fanzine. It comes with a 16 page booklet with art, photos, and an extensive interview, and it represents a new highpoint of something.”  [Byron Coley / The Wire]

“Many Other Music customers will be familiar with Adam Lore’s journal 50 Miles of Elbow Room. For those who aren’t, it is simply one of the loveliest and most informative music journals out there, with respectful and in depth interviews and articles on everyone from Otha Turner and the Rev. Charlie Jackson to William Parker. But he's really outdone himself on this latest installment, a five 7-inch box set devoted to instrument builder and noted jazz pianist Cooper-Moore.  Limited to 300 copies and housed in a cedar box, there is also an engrossing interview with Cooper-Moore where he recounts a good deal of his history and working methods. Cooper-Moore came up during the loft scene era here in New York (in the early-‘70 he set up an artists live/work space on Canal Street where David S. Ware also lived). Most of the recordings he's done since then have featured his piano playing, so it is very welcome indeed to have so many of his homemade and unconventional instruments documented in one package. He clearly has an affinity for earlier African forms and instruments, through his utilization of adapted banjos and by constructing his own xylophone-esque ashimba.  There are also stunning pieces for hand held harp, diddley-bo, mouth-bow, and bamboo fife amongst others. A New York artist through and through, Cooper-Moore has recorded some of these songs outdoors on city bridges, with one session even taking place atop the Ward’s Island garbage dump. It is clear in these performances that Cooper-Moore’s musicality is one that is fully intent on capturing the listeners sense of wonder. The man is clearly a treasure, and this package goes a long way toward securing his important place in today's musical landscape.” [Michael Klausman / Other Music]

A few Real Audio soundclips:

A Lament for Trees

Emancipation

Crow Shit on the Window