Jazz pianist, composer and artist Jason Moran hails from Houston. He’s an alumnus of the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Jaki Byard. Upon graduation, he studied with Andrew Hill and Muhal Richard Abrams. Moran’s 18-year relationship with Blue Note Records produced nine highly acclaimed recordings. His groundbreaking trio, The Bandwagon (with bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits), is celebrating their 20th anniversary.
Moran’s performances with Cassandra Wilson, Charles Lloyd and the late Sam Rivers reveal the scope of Moran’s partnerships and musicmaking. He’s also worked with visual artists Adrian Piper, Joan Jonas, Glenn Ligon, Adam Pendleton, Lorna Simpson, Kara Walker, Stan Douglas and others. Recent awards and fellowships include the MacArthur Foundation, US Artists, Doris Duke Foundation and Ford Foundation. Moran collaborated with his wife, the mezzo-soprano composer Alicia Hall Moran, as named artists in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, constructing BLEED, a five-day series of live performances spanning Motown to acupuncture and dance. They also created WORK SONGS for the 2015 Venice Biennial and continue to produce albums for their record label, YES RECORDS.
Since his first album, Moran has produced 14 albums, created scores for Ava DuVernay’s films Selma and 13th and author Ta-Nehisi Coates’ staged version of Between the World and Me. History is a recurring theme for Moran, who has mounted monumental touring works for Thelonious Monk (IN MY MIND: Monk at Town Hall 1959), Fats Waller (Fats Waller Dance Party, plus a Grammy-nominated album All Rise: An Elegy for Fats Waller) and James Reese Europe (James Reese Europe and the Absence of Ruin).
In 2018, Moran’s first solo museum exhibition opened at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and traveled to ICA/Boston. The exhibition opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art in September 2019. Moran is the artistic director for Jazz at The Kennedy Center, teaches at New England Conservatory and Jazz Ahead and curates the Artist’s Studio series for Park Avenue Armory in New York.
