Jason Moran
pianist, composer (session conducted via e-mail)
Jaki Byard
When I was 18, I attended Manhattan School of Music with the sole purpose of studying with Jaki Byard. Byard used the piano in a way that combined inventiveness with history. He balanced them with ease and humor, but most importantly with RIGOR. I definitely learned this directly from him, every Monday afternoon for 4 years straight.
Jazz
A word often uttered and rarely understood.
Houston
I was born in Houston in 1975, in a historic African-American neighborhood called Third Ward. We are hearing about this neighborhood today because it is the neighborhood George Floyd was from.
The Vanguard
I once heard Cecil Taylor say about his time in the Vanguard “I had to turn that basement into a citadel”. The Vanguard is my favorite place to perform: the intimacy and the blood on the walls.
Andrew Hill
Andrew had the ability to be flexible with rhythm, allowing it to slide around just as easily as harmony. He was a wonderful mentor to me up until his death. He was also the first person to mention to me “African retention”, around the idea that ancestral memory courses through our blood, informing the sounds we create.
Family
I often tell young musicians, if you can’t have a simple conversation with your family about the crazy music you’re playing, how will you share it with an audience. My family supported every crazy endeavor, which gave me a lot of confidence around how I could put a life together and start my own family.
“If I could do it all over again, one thing I would do differently…”
I would never think of it. On second thought, maybe I wouldn’t lie so often.
Muhal Richard Abrams
Abrams taught me about discipline as a composer, and the power of the collective. The AACM has been one of my biggest influences because they made their own with their own. Their own concerts, their own music, their own collaborations, their own language.
"A thing that irritates me….”
Racism
Choice whom to have dinner with from “the other side…”
My mother, Mary Lou Moran. I’d want her to meet my children.
Music and social consciousness
Music marks our time, and our feelings. It’s imperative to allow it to work that way, even if the music stinks, because it is a therapeutic process.
The meaning of tradition
Tradition changes.
Underrated
Better to be underrated than overrated. Charles Lloyd likes to say “the mediocre man is always at his best."
Practice
Practice makes the mind grow, even if sometimes it feels like we’re just running around the track.
Three wishes
1. Covid disappears 2. my mother is alive. 3. a new power structure
My greatest artistic triumph
Making children, Jonas and Malcolm Moran with my wife, Alicia Hall Moran.
The piano
The piano is the world, all can exist inside those 88 keys.
Bandwagon
Tarus Mateen and Nasheet Waits are my big brothers, and over 21 years, we have stuck together to create all around the world. Let’s see how long we can go.
Slugs
If I were in NYC in the 70s, I would have hoped to be brave enough to visit Slugs. Something about how musicians talk about the danger on and off the stage.
One question that should have been asked but wasn't….
Why NEC?
…so…
One more question then...
Why NEC?
Because of Jaki Byard, Cecil Taylor, Coretta Scott King and John Rosamond Johnson.