OCEAN CITY- Head to Crabcake Factory Bayside this Sunday to support Cole Moran, an inspirational young man whose harmonica skills will blow your socks off.
A benefit will be held for Cole Moran at Crabcake Factory Bayside on Route 54 this Sunday, March 22, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Cole Moran and his father, professional musician Frankie Moran, will be playing live during the event.
Cole Moran, 12, was born blind and has early onset scoliosis of which he has been undergoing a series of corrective surgeries at Johns Hopkins, which he will continue to have twice a year until he is fully grown. He attends Maryland School for the Blind as he and his family reside near Baltimore.
Cole Moran started playing music as an infant and completed his first melody before one-years-old. He has perfect pitch and can tell you what key any song is in with just the first listen.
“Cole started playing music as soon as he could. He started banging on drums as soon as he could move his arms, and started playing the piano sitting on the floor at about nine months. He already had rhythm and we knew he could hear the notes because he would correct himself in trying to find the right note,” Frankie Moran said. “I would sit on the floor and practice, and he would inevitably crawl over to see what I was doing. He would strum along or bang a drum. In the past two years, he has really been able to pick up anything he hears and play it. His music ability has launched proficiently in a relatively short amount of time.”
Through the Maryland School for the Blind, Cole received music therapy at an early age which helped him learn to speak. Cole’s instrument of choice lately is the harmonica which he plays intently learning every note of any song within a day.
Frankie Moran is a professional musician and together the duo has been performing around the region to rave reviews as the band “Blind Wind.” Frankie Moran performs at the Atlantic Hotel in Berlin every other Friday and Cole Moran joins when his school schedule allows.
“It was really a natural progression,” Frankie Moran said of partnering with his son to perform. “One day he was playing Ants go Marching, and I starting picking it up and playing with him. The Lions Club was having a meeting at the Maryland School for the Blind and the principle asked us to play a few songs for them, so that was the beginning of it, and from there we took it to the Atlantic Hotel.”
Frankie Moran is an award-winning songwriter who has logged many hours performing up and down the East Coast. He writes and records with Moran Hill Hurwitz and producer Stephen Joseph Antonelli as Song Builder Studios and Studio Unknown in Catonsville.