Jason Moran

Jason Moran (b. 1975, Houston) is a Jazz pianist, composer, and performance artist, He earned a degree from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Jaki Byard. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2010 and was the Artistic Director for Jazz at The Kennedy Center from 2012–25. Moran currently teaches at the New England Conservatory and was recently inducted into the Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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 while respecting the accomplishments of his predecessors. His activity stretches beyond the many recordings and performances with masters of the form including Charles Lloyd, Cassandra Wilson, Archie Shepp and the late Sam Rivers. His trio, The Bandwagon (with drummer Nasheet Waits and bassist Tarus Mateen), has resulted in a profound discography over the past 27 years. He has released 19 critically acclaimed recordings and mined the histories of Thelonious Monk, Fats Waller, James Reese Europe and Duke Ellington for his multimedia concerts. His collaborations with Alicia Hall Moran include Two Wings: The Music of Black America in Migration commissioned by Carnegie Hall, Bleed for the 2012 Whitney Biennial, and Work Songs for the 2015 Venice Biennial.

The scope of Moran!s partnerships and musicmaking with venerated and iconic visual artists is extensive. He has collaborated with such major figures as Adrian Piper, Joan Jonas, Glenn Ligon, Kara Walker, Lorna Simpson, Julie Mehretu, Adam Pendleton, and Lucy Raven. He has scored Ava DuVerna’s films, Selma and 13th, and is currently scoring her latest documentary. He also scored the stage and screen adaptations of TaNehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. His collaborations with dance companies include Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet, Martha Graham, Ronald K. Brown’s Evidence Dance Company, Kyle Abraham’s AIM and the New York City Ballet. His next collaboration is with the novels of Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami for a performance at Town Hall in New York.

As a visual artist, his solo exhibition, Jason Moran: Black Stars: Writing in the Dark is currently on view at Mass MoCA in North Adams through January 2026. Other recent institutional solos shows include Bathing the Room with Blues at The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2021–22), and Jason Moran, organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN in 2018, which traveled to the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, Wexner Center for the Arts, and Whitney Museum of American Art. A monographic publication accompanied the exhibition. Moran’s work is in the collections of MOMA, Whitney Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, MFA Houston and SFMOMA.