Racer Session #551 | Moe Weisner | Sunday October 16th, 2022

Hey there Racer fans,

We’re coming at you this Sunday with another Racer Session, hosted by our friend, bassist and composer Moe Weisner. Moe will be joined on Sunday in duo by pianist Jona Brown.

Moe grew up studying a multitude of instruments including guitar, clarinet, and violin,before settling into a relationship with electric and upright bass. He is a creative, richly talented musician who equally at home playing jazz or classical music as he is diving into prog, neo-soul, or free improvisation. Moe also recently finished his Master's Degree at CWU and is now back in Seattle, which we are richer for!

Jona is a classically trained jazz pianist, organist, and bassist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After studying the jazz idiom under Cleveland pianists Joe Hunter and Jackie Warren, Jona attended Berklee College of Music on the North American scholarship while also spending one year studying at Berklee's Valencia Campus in Spain. During his time in Boston and Valencia, he studied with renowned pianists Kevin Harris and Albert Sanz. After a multitude of tours and performances in the greater Boston and Valencia Area, he relocated to the Pacific Northwest to further participate in both music and programming.

A quick aside - Moe and I met during our time at Cornish’s music program, just north of Cafe Racer by about a 15 minute walk. We were both lucky to study with a multitude of musicians, but one of our most beloved professors, Chuck Deardorf, passed away on Sunday night after a weeks-long battle with COVID. It has been a week of mourning for hundreds upon hundreds of his friends, colleagues, and students, but I think especially of my friends like Moe who were in Chuck’s bass studio and learned such a beautiful craft from Chuck week after week, year after year. In a strange way I’m glad that Moe in particular is on this Sunday, to present a part of himself to all of y’all that Chuck imparted upon him, at a session that he was always encouraging of to me.

Music on at 7pm, jam session to follow. We’ll see you at Racer, y’all. And read on for some words from Moe himself.

- Haley

—

"Before the pandemic, I had a modern jazz project called the Moe Weisner Quartet. This group played mostly original modern jazz tunes of mine with some jazz standards mixed in as well.

Soon after the pandemic started, I moved to Ellensburg, WA to go to grad school at Central Washington University. After I finished school and moved back to Seattle in July 2022, I decided it was time to revive my old jazz project. Right around this time, I jammed and caught up with the wonderful pianist and composer Jona Brown. He played in the last pre-pandemic version of my Quartet, so he was already someone I had in mind for the new project, but we ended up deciding to make this a co-led band featuring a rough 50/50 ratio of my tunes and his tunes.

This is the smallest version of the new project. The core group is a Quartet with Max Holmberg on drums and Jun Iida on trumpet. Max and Jun are both unavailable for this date, so we decided to have this be an opportunity to try this group as a duo.

The set will mostly be original compositions by myself and Jona, but we will also be playing one modern jazz standard in honor of the late Chuck Deardorf. I studied with him at Cornish, and he was a major mentor for me as he was for so many others in the Seattle music scene. He and I kept in touch after I graduated, and I have often referred to him as my "Bass Dad." The music scene - and particicularly the bass community of Seattle - owes him a great debt and will remember him with love. The one non-original in the set will be one of Chuck's favorite tunes. Come to the show to find out what it is!"

- Moe