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Jason Moran piano solo

By Antonio Baiano

Jason Moran and the Bandwagon at the Kimmel Center

By Victor L. Schermer

Jason Moran and the Bandwagon Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts Perelman Theater Philadelphia, PA March 29, 2015 This concert contrasted stylistically with a previous engagement at the Kimmel Center when, in 2007, Jason Moran appeared with an expanded group including horns and a vocalist. At that time, “The group played a diverse pastiche of themes derived from blues, gospel, popular music, and an old cowboy motif found in every Western flick you've ever ...

Jason Moran: Joyful Proclamations

By Franz A. Matzner

Jason Moran requires no introduction, either as an artistic alchemist or a spokesperson and educator. Moran has left an indelible mark on modern jazz and is now seated at one of the nation's most preeminent performing spaces--the Kennedy Center--as its artistic director for jazz. Already, his capacity for insight, humor, and innovation have launched a new era for the Center's jazz programming, defined in equal measures by careful regard for the music's history, a broad artistic view, and pointed political ...

Jason Moran: All Rise: A Joyful Elegy for Fats Waller

By Mark F. Turner

Jason Moran is an artist who is not afraid to look back while constantly pressing forward. The 2010 MacArthur Fellow is a leading jazz pianist with moments of kinetic energy, agility, and sensitivity, the likes of his one-time teacher, the great Jaki Byard. Whether performing with varied ensembles and musicians, bringing new perspectives as the Artistic Director for Jazz at The Kennedy Center or combining freestyle jazz with live skateboarders in San Francisco, Moran's passion and capacity is having an ...

Rebellion and Respect: Kennedy Center Celebrates Blue Note's 75th Anniversary

By Franz A. Matzner

Blue Note Record's significance to modern music is as inarguable as its story is remarkable. Over its 75 year lifespan the label has recorded many of jazz's defining artists, its evolution tracing the trajectory of America's most significant musical form from its beginnings to its present day diverse manifestations. It is therefore especially auspicious that the celebration of its 75th anniversary took place at the Kennedy Center just as the center welcomes experimentalist Jason Moran as its now ...

Jason Moran, Randy Weston and Billy Harper at SFJazz

By Harry S. Pariser

Jason Moran, Randy Weston and Billy Harper SFJazz San Francisco, CA November 24, 2013 Three fine musicians came together on stage in a new jazz facility in San Francisco. First up was a rising star in the jazz world, an acclaimed pianist who frequently incorporates samples of taped music and text in his onstage performance. The second portion of the evening saw the reunion of two longtime off-and-on collaborators. The venue was SFJazz. The musicians: ...

Jason Moran: Ten

By William Carey

Jason MoranTenBlue Note Records2010

Ten celebrates the ten year life of the Bandwagon, pianist Jason Moran's trio with bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits. The piano trio is a mainstay in the jazz tradition, and here the Bandwagon does a characteristically great job of being firmly in that tradition while also blazing a new trail.

“Blue Blocks" starts with a descending motif, planing chords in a gravitational freefall, the hint of ...

Jason Moran: Ten

By David Adler

Pianist Jason Moran offers Ten, to mark a decade with the Bandwagon, his trio with bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits, and it's an anniversary worth celebrating. But Ten is also Moran's first release since Artist In Residence (Blue Note, 2006), so it affords him the opportunity to include pieces from long-form commissioned works he's written since then. The loping, gospel-tinged “Blue Blocks" is from a multimedia suite inspired by the quilt makers of Gee's Bend, Alabama. “RFK in ...

Jason Moran Returns to Monk at Town Hall

By Eric Benson

Jason Moran and the Big Bandwagon In My Mind: Monk at Town Hall 1959Town Hall New York, New York February 27, 2009

Jason Moran was playing perfectly. He'd just begun his solo introduction to “In My Mind: Monk at Town Hall, 1959"—his tribute to, and reimagining of, Thelonious Monk's historic concert--dashing off a few strains of “'Round Midnight" in a medley that had him leaping across the keyboard with poise and polish. ...

Jason Moran

By Martin Longley

Pianist Jason Moran usually plays well within the jazz tradition, but often adopts a sideways slant, open to electronic interference or maybe an askew cover version of a pop or rap tune. Growing up in Houston, he went on to study at the Manhattan School Of Music, becoming firmly entrenched on the New York scene.

He's now becoming increasingly concerned with the world of multimedia presentation, the latest example of which is “In My Mind: Monk ...

Jason Moran: Artist in Residence

By Joel Roberts

While most jazz artists, even the great ones, tend to stick to the tried and true, Jason Moran has risen to the upper echelon of the jazz world by constantly challenging his audience. Listeners never really know what to expect from the 31-year-old pianist except that it's going to be fresh, intellectually rigorous, exceedingly of-the-moment music drawn from a variety of unanticipated sources. His latest release, a followup to last year's blues-inspired Same Mother, is no exception. ...

Jason Moran: Artist in Residence

By Mark F. Turner

Art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, and Jason Moran's Artist In Residence is no exception. An enigmatic traditionalist, Moran has produced releases that are as diverse as his reinterpretation the blues on Same Mother (Blue Note, 2005) or his conceptualization of the soundtrack of daily life on his debut, Soundtrack to Human Motion (Blue Note, 1999). With this ambitious seventh recording, he again brings fertile ideas to fruition with pieces resulting from recent commissions he accepted ...