Moe Seager Jazz Poet

Favorite website

http://www.myspace.com/bluenotemetaphor

Favorite blog

http://moeseager.blogspot.com

Pittsburgh Connection

A native of East Liberty,Pittsburgh, Moe Seager lives in Paris where he publishes poetry and records and performs jazz-poetry with his Blue Note
Metaphor ensemble.The project was co-founded by fellow Paris expat, Trumpeter, Rasul Siddik. The ensemble came about thanks to another jazz-poetry band of 2 - Max Roach and Amiri Baraka - who introduced Seager to Siddik at the 1996 Paris Jazz Festival. The group is near finishing its second album.

For the past 3 years Moe's e-journal " Paris Calling"; poems,stories and political commentary, goes out as a direct email to a readership of several thousands around the world. His send includes direct links to his music and earlier written texts. To receive it, contact: moeseagers@yahoo.com

Many of Moe's poems and jazz lyrics are created from his Pittsburgh experiences. He can be heard in clubs and venues (in Pgh) as he visits town each year. In the meantime Moe performs in Paris, at home at the Duc des Lombards club, le Miroirterie and in any number of New York's haunts,in Harlem at St. Nick's Pub, the Lennox Lounge, Minton's Playhouse; downtown at the Poet's Club, the DUMBO festival and in Brooklyn night spots.

From Pittsburgh Moe won a Golden Quill award in Journalism, "One Day Longer Than Pittston", In Pittsburgh weekly, Sept.1988. He received an International Human Rights award from the University of Pittsburgh,1990. From 1985-1990, Moe founded,wrote and directed the Pittsburgh Guerilla Street Theater, doing the "Shadow Project" each August to commemorate the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.In the same period his commissioned works for stage were performed in Pittsburgh and for several out-of-town venues.While collaborating with mime artist Marc Thompson, Moe included music scores and choreography in his stage works, writing his own lyrics to the scores.In 1990 the French Ministry of Culture published Moe's lengthy poem dedicated to Nicaragua, "Rio Escondido". Two years later Busking Editions,Paris, published his poetry collection "Fishermen and Pool Sharks". In 2003, his collection "One World",Cairo press, was published entirely in Arabic translation by Sammy Stelios, Moe's poems and short stories have been published throughout the U.S.,France, Bahrain, elsewhere.

Moe attributes his wider jazz appreciation to his days as a founder and broadcaster of WYEP fm in 1972. From the station's Cable Place,Oakland basement Moe spinned jazz tracks weekly from 3 a.m to 7 a.m. Equally,he fondly remembers the early 70's as a regular in Sunny Days club in Oakland, listening to Spyder Rondinelli, Eric Claus, Kenny Blake and a line up of guest artists. In the 80's as a member of the Kuntu Poets, Moe read with Rob Penny, Chawley Williams, Lamont Steptoe, Dennis Brutus and Valerie Lawrence. From 1987-1991,his last years living in Pittsburgh he hosted a 30 minute poetry show, The Bards of Three Rivers. "On occasion I would read my own works and works from Langston Hughes with jazz background tracks from Lester Bowie and Pharoah Sanders.The combination of jazz to my spoken word was performance art."

"I'll never forget being invited to sit in once with the Centre Avenue Poets, the grand daddy bards of the Hill District, who met early Saturday evenings at the Crawford Grill.Yeah, these bards laid down poetry just before it was time for Blakey,Benson, Jamal, Turntine, to take the stage. On that particular evening , the Grill now shut down, we met at Kelley's Bar in East Liberty.The reading finished with newly awarded Obey winner, Yale Younger Drama Writers winner, Hill poet and playwright, August Wilson. The man was awesome! Hey, we poets understood that our verse was the spoken language of jazz. I thought, why not deliver my poems musically, my voice as instrument".

About Poetry and Jazz, Moe says " As a kid in Pittsburgh I started writing poetry at age 8. At the same time I was thrilled to hear radio and television plays of jazz tunes like Harlem Nocturne, Water Mellon Man, The Look of Love and the Bossa Nova craze ushered in by Stan Getz, Jobim, and Sergio Mendez.I heard Song For My Father by Horace Silver, featuring our own Roger Humphries on drums. I wore that record out! I remember singing poetry lines to it and feeling good in my skin, home in my soul. At 10 years old, late one night I watched Steve Allen on piano accompany Jack Keroac reading from "On the Road", on television stage. I knew then and there that I was forever changed, thirsty for the alchemy of Be Bop and Beat poetry, the upward spirals of Coltrane's riffs and me letting go with the language of the heart. I felt the urge and flow of poetry to jazz. I'm never so free, more expressive, than when I'm on stage, a pumped and throbbing jazz ensemble pushing me forward to poem, often taking the poem song to the bridge and flying off in improv, coming back in with the beat,melody and the word. Designed to morph, never the same, the last time like the first time - always unique".

Blue Note Metaphor jazz-poetry ensemble:
Moe Seager, vocals, author - all lyrics.
Rasul Siddik, Trumpet, flutes
Katy Roberts, Piano
Xavier Padilla, Bass
Ichiro Onoe, Drums

Guest Artists:
Brad Wheeler, Chicago. Tenor Saxophone (Dear Creation)
Pierre Chaz, Paris. Guitar (4 a.m.Pittsburgh, Excerpt to Liberation)
Mickey Neilson, Dublin. Guitar (Dear Creation)
Ronin Guilfoyle, Dublin. Bass ( Dear Creation)
Connor Guilfoyle,Dublin. Drums (Dear Creation)

Favorite Pittsburgh musicians/performers

Billy Strayhorn, Art Blakey, Ahmed Jamal, Roger Humphries, George Benson,Nelson Harrison, Howey Alexander,Eric Claus, Spyder Rondinelli, Kenny Blake,Billy Price, East Liberty's Gene Kelley ,East Liberty poet Lamont B. Steptoe, poet/playwright August Wilson,poets Dennis Brutus Chawley Williams and Rob Penny, mime artist Marc Thompson , my first stage director - City Theater's Mark Masterson, filmmaker George Romero, WAMO am "Easy 86 jazz radio", the masterful jazz radio hosts Tony Mowad and Frank Greenlee... and soooo many others!!

Favorite Jazz Radio or media station

WBGO fm Newark.
AlJazeera news network English broadcast.

Favorite Pittsburgh Jazz Venue

The Shadow Lounge. The Kelly-Strayhorn Theater, the legendary houses - the Crawford Grill, the Hurricane.

About Me:

I'm about creating poems, many of which are put to jazz arrangement for stage and recording studio by my band,Blue Note Metaphor.I'm a socially conscious human, exercising the Poet's role as voice of the community - local and global. We are messengers for the quality of life - and the lack of it! In the tradition of jazz-poets, Langston Hughes, Kenneth Patchin, Jack Keroac, Amiri Baraka, I am wed, a natural marriage, Poetry to Jazz.
Life is short - So am I.
Keep the Beat on the Pulse of Life!

Website:

http://www.myspace.com/bluenotemetaphor

Artist or Fan

artist, fan