Pianist Eddie Moore riffs on adaptability ahead of this weekend’s Winterlude Jazz Festival at JCCC

Eddie Moore. // photo by Megan Strickland

This weekend’s Winterlude Jazz Festival at Johnson County Community College’s Midwest Trust Center features two days of live jazz in the Center’s Yardley Hall and Polsky Theatre.

Beginning the afternoon of Saturday, February 15, there will be live performances from Lynn Zimmer and Friends, Eddie Moore, Doug Talley Quartet, Ensemble Ibérica, and the Deborah Brown Quartet, among others, which continues through Sunday, February 16, culminating with the festival’s headliner, as Jazz at Lincoln Center Presents: New Orleans Songbook.

Pianist Eddie Moore has performed numerous times at JCCC’s jazz events, but his performance on Saturday afternoon looks to be something slightly different from what one might expect from his work with Re/Gen or 2022’s hip hop-influenced Intuition album.

“The next project for me that’s coming out in March is a piano trio record, kind of going back to the roots of just the acoustic instrument,” explains Moore one afternoon. “[JCCC] have an amazing Steinway, so it was a great opportunity to just kind of be a little bit more simple with it.”

Moore will be presenting music that’s inspired by his roots in Houston, as well as having been in Kansas City for so long. He promises “one or two songs” people might have heard, as well as
“some new stuff that fits into that lane that’s off the record that’s coming out in March that’s all trio,” along with some new stuff material that he was literally in the middle of writing when we spoke.

Given Moore’s versatility which allows him to go from loops to traditional jazz piano from one performance to another, we asked the pianist and educator what changes his approach from show to show.

“The first thing I look at is the infrastructure,” Moore says. “Where are we playing? What is the venue capable of? When it’s something that I’m brought into, I look at that first, like, ‘What can I actually do? What are their strengths?’”

Going to JCCC, continues Moore, he knows it’s an audience who might be a little bit older. While the pianist has played electric as part of events there before, he says he wants to surprise them with the opposite of what Re/Gen is.

“I still live in this acoustic lane,” offers Moore. “It’s dope. I like it. This is my music here I want to share that with you. Forget all the visuals. We’re not running none of that.”

As he puts it, instead like turning something down like that because he can’t do visuals or the things which might otherwise accessorize a performance, Moore lets it inspire him, and takes what he’s done as part of his regular appearances at the Majestic as a rehearsal for something like Winterlude.

On the other hand, Re/Gen or his performances at Corvino, where he’s dealing with Ableton loops and a drummer, serve as a rehearsal for an upcoming performance at In the Lowest Ferns, because he’s addressing the aesthetics and opportunities of the venue, rather than strictly going off some predetermined idea of what Moore feels he does.

“At the Lowest Ferns, we’re again addressing the infrastructure,” Moore goes on. “It’s like, ‘Well, they don’t have a piano, so we’re not doing that but they do have a dope aesthetic and they do have light and installation things,’ so it’s like, ‘Let’s just present the other band with the other space.’”

It’s all different music, too. They’re two completely different groups and Moore is playing completely different instruments. For Re/Gen, he’s playing Fender Rhodes key bass and synthesizers and for the piano trio at JCCC, he’s just going to play piano, which will serve to showcase another aspect of Moore’s skills with which a larger audience might not be familiar, and he’s using that on the next album – which, for the record, is the first time he’s told anyone about it.

“You’re the first one to hear that,” Moore says. “The next Eddie Moore record is different than Intuition. It’s the complete opposite. It’s just piano trio with upright bass on it and drums and it sounds great. It’s good to live in that realm.”

Moore wants to share that it’ll be the first piano trio record from him, and the JCCC Winterlude show will present that. He says the music he’s writing now has led him to revisit the music he heard coming from Houston and the sounds he’s learned living in Kansas City.

“I totally moved to Kansas City to hone in my jazz ability,” Moore says. “I didn’t think I was a great jazz player when I moved here, which is totally why I landed here.”

In addition, Moore has gained some things from working as a teacher. While he plays out constantly, his day job as a lecturer in jazz at the University of Kansas’ School of Music has leant a few new things to his perspective.

“I think it definitely keeps me humble,” reflects Moore. “I’m so blessed to be at KU, man. We have some really great students that are writing some really incredible music, and I’m like, ‘These dudes are crazy.’”

At KU, Moore teaches mostly commercial music, ranging from modern jazz combos to pop–“where they’re literally playing wedding band-type songs,” he says–so a lot of the instruction consists of Moore writing for them. As he sees how his students take to it, Moore then addresses how he had originally communicated they play it.

“Maybe my communication might be off on getting people to play it in the right way that I see it because they’re seeing it at face value,” explains the pianist. “It just helps me be a better band leader [and] helps me communicate, because they’re not professional, but the outcome is the same. I still want them to play and they bring a different perspective.”

As Moore’s student groups are focused on writing original music, he then becomes the teacher and more or less the producer of this music, giving them ideas on how to think texturally because they’re not thinking about that yet.

“It’s really fun,” enthuses Moore. “The young dudes got some heat.”

As we wrap up, we get into a discussion regarding how the youth are helping to make jazz cool again, and not strictly the province of old folks. Be it BadBadNotGood or Adrian Younge’s work with Jazz is Dead, there’s a big jazz renaissance with young people.

“I think it’s like their new punk rock,” comments Moore. “I’ve been listening to the Javier Santiago record. The production on it is crazy and the records are there, you know? Like BadBadNotGood playing with MF Doom and stuff like that–that’s where the music lives and it’s exciting. There’s a huge lane for jazz music now. I feel it’s exciting.”

The Winterlude Jazz Festival takes place at the Midwest Trust Center at Johnson Country Community College this Saturday, February 15, and Sunday, February 16. Eddie Moore plays Saturday at 2 p.m.

Details and tickets available here.