Ralph Moore

R alph Moore has a list of performing and recording credits that reads like a Who’s Who of jazz history: Dizzy Gillespie, Horace Silver, Freddie Hubbard, Ray Brown, Roy Haynes, J.J. Johnson, Cedar Walton, Bobby Hutcherson, McCoy Tyner, Roy Hargrove, Oscar Peterson, and Kenny Baron to name just a few. In fact, the last time Ralph came to SJW, he performed with the Ray Brown Trio. His albums as a bandleader are all essential listening, and you’ll find them on labels such as Landmark, Criss Cross, Concord, Reservoir, and Savoy.

London-born Moore has been a dedicated musician since he was a teenager, and the life has paid huge dividends. Moore was born to a British show business family and although means were scarce, life was, nonetheless, culturally rich. His mother, Josephine Wood, a lifelong dancer, and the subject of a BBC2 Black Britain documentary, encouraged Moore creatively. High school years were spent with his American father in Santa Maria, CA, and college at Berklee College of Music in Boston before making the sojourn to New York in 1981.

Ralph has never separated from the purity of the passion that drives him every day. Fifteen years playing tenor in the band for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno kept Moore on the left coast and restricted to playing locally due to the constraints of the television show. During that time, Moore collaborated in a few cooperative jazz quartets and quintets— one in particular—aptly named “Escape from New York,” featuring some of his Tonight Show cohorts, drummer Marvin “Smitty” Smith and bassist Bob Hurst. With The Tonight Show behind him now, Moore is poised to get back to what is intrinsically and innately who he is – a jazz musician playing and creating the music he loves, and sharing his knowledge with the next generation. SJW is thrilled to welcome Ralph back!