Jason Moran

Jason Moran is an American jazz pianist and composer from Houston, Texas, born in 1975. He works in jazz and post-bop, and is associated with Jamo Publishing.

Early training and education

Moran begins studying piano at the age of six. He considers quitting before hearing Thelonious Monk, whose music renews his interest and becomes an early influence. He attends Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, where he plays in the big band and leads a jazz quartet. He later moves to New York to study at the Manhattan School of Music, where Jaki Byard teaches him for four years. He also studies with Muhal Richard Abrams and Andrew Hill, both of whom shape his approach to improvisation and composition.

Career

In 1997, while still in college, Moran is recommended to saxophonist Greg Osby by drummer Eric Harland. Osby hires him for a European tour, and Moran becomes a regular member of Osby’s touring and recording groups. His professional recording debut is on Osby’s Blue Note album Further Ado.

Blue Note signs Moran soon after, and he releases his debut as a leader, Soundtrack to Human Motion, in 1999. The recording includes Greg Osby, Eric Harland, vibraphonist Stefon Harris and bassist Lonnie Plaxico. His work on the album draws attention for compositions that reference visual artists and for his ongoing “Gangsterism” series. His second Blue Note album, Facing Left, is a trio recording with bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits. Black Stars, his third Blue Note release, adds Sam Rivers on saxophone, flute and piano.

In 2002, Moran releases the solo piano album Modernistic. In 2003, The Bandwagon, recorded from a six-day run at New York’s Village Vanguard with Mateen and Waits, extends his trio work. His sixth Blue Note release, Same Mother, adds guitarist Marvin Sewell to the Bandwagon and is built around the blues. His seventh Blue Note album as a leader, Artist in Residence, grows out of commissioned projects for organisations including the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Dia Foundation in New York and Jazz at Lincoln Center. It features Joan Jonas, Adrian Piper, Abdou Mboup, Ralph Alessi and his wife, classically trained operatic soprano Alicia Hall Moran.

Collaborations and associated acts

Moran performs as a sideman with Cassandra Wilson, Joe Lovano, Don Byron, Steve Coleman, Lee Konitz, Von Freeman, Ravi Coltrane and Stefon Harris. He is also associated with Shift, The Charles Lloyd New Quartet, Eric Revis’ 11:11, Eric Harland Trio and Ensemble Double Up.

Influences, commissions and wider work

Moran draws inspiration from visual art as well as jazz, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Egon Schiele and Robert Rauschenberg. For commissioned works supported by the San Francisco Jazz Festival and Chamber Music America’s New Works programme, he uses sampled conversations as vocal triggers, and these pieces become the basis for later compositions. He also writes original scores for film, winning Best Original Score at the First Run Film Festival in 2002 and 2003 for Two Three Time and All We Know of Heaven.

Awards and teaching

Moran receives the Cork Jazz Festival’s Guiness Rising Star Award in 2002 and the Jazz Journalists Association’s Up and Coming Jazz Musician Award in 2003. He tops the Down Beat Critics Poll in 2003 and 2004 in the Rising Star Jazz Artist, Rising Star Pianist and Rising Star Composer categories. New York’s Nightlife Awards recognise The Bandwagon and his solo performance at The Jazz Standard. He is also named Playboy magazine’s first Jazz Artist of the Year in 2005.

He teaches and lectures at the Banff Center for the Arts, Vallekilde Jazz Camp, Skidmore College, Manhattan School of Music, The New School, the School for Improvised Music and the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. His family creates the Moran Scholarship Award at HSPVA in 1994, and he takes over responsibility for selecting recipients in 2001.