Performance Calendar

Projects and Events

Excursion to the Whitney Museum: A private tour for students of Moran’s first solo museum show at the Whitney Museum of American Art 

Who’s in the Lobby?: A pop-up performance in the June Noble Larkin Lobby for Juilliard community members

Jazz Ensemble Coachings: Coachings for the Duke Ellington Ensemble in preparation for a concert on Music Influenced by Jazz 

Jazz Piano Master Class:Virtual piano studio class open to all Jazz pianists 

Video

Bio

Jazz pianist, composer, and artist Jason Moran was born in Houston in 1975 and earned a degree from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Jaki Byard. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2010, is the artistic director for jazz at the Kennedy Center, and teaches at the New England Conservatory. Moran is deeply invested in reassessing and complicating the relationship between music and language, and his extensive efforts in composition, improvisation, and performance are all geared towards challenging the status quo. His activity stretches beyond 15 solo recordings and performances with masters of the form including Charles Lloyd, Cassandra Wilson, and the late Sam Rivers. His 21-year relationship with his trio the Bandwagon (with drummer Nasheet Waits and bassist Tarus Mateen) has resulted in a profound discography for Blue Note Records and Yes Records, a label he co-owns with his wife, singer and composer Alicia Hall Moran. Moran has collaborated with major art world figures such as Adrian Piper, Joan Jonas, Glenn Ligon, Adam Pendleton, Lorna Simpson, and Kara Walker; he has composed five scores for choreographer Alonzo King's Lines Ballet Company and two for Ronald K. Brown's Evidence Dance Company. His longstanding collaborative practice with Alicia Hall Moran is groundbreaking; as named artists in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, they constructed BLEED, a five-day series of performances stretching from readings to wellness to a ring shouts. BLEED explored the power of performance to cross barriers and challenge assumptions. In 2015, they participated in the Venice Biennnial curated by the late Okwui Enwezor.  Recently they created Two Wings: The Music of Black America in Migration  for Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium. Moran keeps a close relationship with history and activism, culminating in his work with film director Ava DuVernay on Selma and 13th.  His multimedia tributes to Thelonious Monk, Fats Waller, and James Reese Europe have shifted the jazz paradigm. Also a visual artist, Moran’s solo museum exhibition debuted at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. The exhibition pulled together his artwork and that of his collaborators, including  installations he creates about jazz clubs of a bygone era. The exhibition traveled to four museums, ending at the Whitney in New York.