moon sessions
Moon Sessions, a vocal collective led by Marwan Ramen
What is Moon Sessions?
Moon Sessions is a gen-z vocal group and collective based out of Brooklyn, NY, composed of members and alumni of NYU Vocollision and its surrounding community. It is founded and directed by Marwan Ramen, an award-winning arranger and videographer for acapella. The group enjoys exploring and creatively arranging vintage-inspired, and introspective modern songs in a vocal jazz leaning style. They enjoy vintage aesthetics and not taking themselves too seriously.
Our Pillars:
GEN Z - we reflect our young generation, bridging old traditions of vocal music with modern mainstream interests
DIVERSE - we reflect inclusive diversity of representation, including in repertoire
CREATIVE - we’re here to not sacrifice our sound, culture, or vision for anything beyond the art itself
FUN - we are non-toxic, selfless, collaborative, and not needlessly competitive, whether it’s with each other or in competition
DEDICATED - though we curate a chiller space, we hold each other accountable to performing and dedicating our time so we sound our best and grant each project and rehearsal the love it deserves
Who is in it?
Moon Sessions is the community built up around Vocollision and NYU and NY’s acapella and vocal scene, bringing in people from those groups and beyond. It is a collective and not a recurring cast of the same exact performers, with each project tailored to as many people as each need. This should help provide the post collegiate acapella outlet a lot of New York’s gen-z looks for in a purposeful way.
Who organises this?
Marwan Ramen will head the overall identity, vision, and outlook, and will likely spearhead the musical direction and arrangement of most moon sessions projects, but moon sessions is open to music direction, creative direction, and arrangements from anybody willing to put those forward, acting as a label and platform for diverse vocal projects to live on.
What separates Moon Sessions?
The acapella community is lacking multiple things that Moon Sessions will provide. We aim to showcase racial diversity in our group iterations. We aim to perform vocal jazz leaning arrangements of modern songs, a combination neither explored nor bridged often, especially coming from our age demographic, reaching a wide target audience of younger people that might listen to artists like Laufey and Clairo, and older audiences that might’ve listened to The Carpenters or The Manhattan Transfer. We also aim to cover modern standards from the latter half of the 20th century in a style that honours vocal past and present. Moon Sessions is also a loose collective versus a rigid group, with opportunities for a wide array of creative direction to take place as a result while still holding the umbrella of being a part of this community with the similar interests we’ve built up.
What have we accomplished so far?
We have received widespread acclaim, and have been nominated or won 5 different awards through the prestigious national Harmony Sweepstakes competition, and also through CASA, the flagship institution for contemporary acapella. We have been nominated for Best Jazz Song (Let You Break My Heart Again), Best Jazz Album (moon sessions vol. 1), Best Jazz Video (rises the moon), Best Indie Video (Somehow.), and we won Best Soloist for our whole group at NY Harmony Sweepstakes in 2023. We were reviewed by the esteemed folks at RARB (Recorded Acapella Review Board) who gave our debut EP a glowing review, highlights attached below.
