This week, I sat down with Gerry Cooper, aka Coop Le Moderne to discuss Avenue Studios, a creative platform highlighting music, art and culture for Louisville musicians, artists, and community members, who want to be emerged in the unique, interpersonal creative scenes in the city.
Multiple projects featuring zines, photo/video work, music releases and curated events have put Avenue Studios on the map, but Coop's most recent project, Sundays Are For Jazz, combines jazz history, present and future through community communion.
Lady Dee: Jazz has been a huge inspiration for Avenue Studios, how do you think Jazz has influenced and inspired you personally?
Coop: Jazz is just the ultimate mood music! It makes me feel good, some of it can make me get down, and some can really get you in a spiritually motivated place. It's just a genre of music that I love, and all the sub-genres that come from it. Music is the biggest inspiration that I have through any form of creativity, and it inspired me to make jazz festival t-shirts, and art as well as jazz focused events.
Lady Dee: If Avenue was in a time capsule, and found years later for future generations, what do you want these images, mixes and stories to say and represent?
Coop: I want people to see that something like this happened in Louisville. If people were to stumble on Avenue years later, I want them to say like "man, there were some great things going on here, and Avenue is something that is pushing culture forward".
Lady Dee: I've seen how you've been able to modernize classic jazz images and albums in a way that's really special, that anyone can relate to. Can you speak on how you've been able to do that through not only your merch but the events you host?
Coop: I just feel like we have to preserve culture. And through Hip-Hop culture you are able to appreciate what came before that. I learned about jazz music through Hip-Hop. My favorite rapper is Jay-Z, and one of my favorite song's is Dead Presidents, I learned about Lonnie Liston Smith through Jay-Z, I find out about Ahmad Jamal through Nas, so it's always been important to me to keep our culture in tack and keep people knowledgeable about it and how its all influenced.
Lady Dee: What sparked Sunday's are for Jazz?
Coop: Sundays are for Jazz came about, and it was very random. A friend of mine in New York asked me if I wanted to throw an event, and I haven't done an event there prior to that, but at the time, I had been pushing the "Jazz in the Morning" merch and the playlist for it. So, after a couple days I hit him up and decided that a Sunday thing would be perfect, and I just said "Sundays are for Jazz" and it all came together. And when you think of jazz events, you expect a live band, not a DJ, and I wanted to play jazz music and every thing that it has influenced, and everyone was really receptive. After that, another DJ here in Louisville, JPB, asked if I wanted to host it at Better Day East and it was birthed from there.
You can hear the full interview, and the Jazz in the Morning playlist, this Saturday at 10pm, with Lady Dee on In the Pocket!
