“A startlingly gifted pianist with a relentless thirst for experimentation” (Los Angeles Times), Jason Moran has consistently presented some of the most exciting and memorable performances in SFJAZZ’s history.
Since he emerged in the late-90s in the quartet of alto saxophonist and ace talent scout Greg Osby, Moran developed at an exponential rate in the company of his supremely flexible quartet the Bandwagon with bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits, honing an approach that soaks up inspirations and reconfigures them to suit his own exacting needs.
Moran’s music combines jagged, kinetic expressionism and unabashed romanticism, bristling with ideas lifted from some of the less explored corners of the jazz piano pantheon. Winner of a coveted MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 2010 and Rising Star Jazz Artist, Rising Star Pianist, and Rising Star Composer from DownBeat for three consecutive years, the pianist has released a series of projects as satisfying conceptually as they are sonically, showcasing his capacious intelligence, rollicking touch, and road-less-traveled sensibility.
His compositional style has always been fluid, touching on elements of stride, angular post-bop, hip-hop, sometimes incorporating pre-recorded elements and electronics, such as a field recordings of the Gee’s Bend quilters of rural Alabama and Moran’s “Ringing My Phone” – a virtuoso 2004 tightrope walk that finds the Bandwagon matching the densely melodic and rhythmic cadences of Moran's recording of an Istanbul woman’s mellifluous one-sided phone conversation.
The pianist’s tenure as SFJAZZ Resident Artistic Director during the inaugural 2013-14 Season culminated in two freely improvised concerts by the Bandwagon with guest guitarist Jeff Parker in collaboration with a group of San Francisco skateboarders, who performed on a full-size half-pipe located in front of the Miner Auditorium stage.
While simultaneously creating new avenues for his compositional work and doing sideman duty with the likes of saxophone legend Charles Lloyd and trumpeter Ralph Alessi, Moran has lent his formidable musicality and visionary approach to creative endeavors that celebrate the work of his influential forebears. From his ebullient Fats Waller Dance Party and recreations of Thelonious Monk’s famous 1959 large ensemble concert at New York's Town Hall to a program dedicated to the trailblazing bandleader James Reese Europe – a near-mythic early 20th century figure who brought jazz to the continent with his Harlem Hellfighters during WWI – Moran maintains a bone-deep connection to formative moments in jazz, and world, history.
The music of Duke Ellington has been a recurring theme in Moran’s performances and recordings for over two decades, including notable versions of “Later” and “Wig Wise” on the 2000 Blue Note session Facing Left and “Kinda Dukish” on the following year’s Black Stars, as well as exploratory versions of “Mood Indigo” and Billy Strayhorn’s Ellington band composition “Pretty Girl” (aka “Star-Crossed Lovers”) on his and saxophonist Charles Lloyd’s ECM duo album Hagar’s Song from 2013.
Recently, Moran has engaged the Ellington songbook for solo performances at Boston's Berklee Performance Center and Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center, where Moran serves as Artistic Director for Jazz, bringing his singular 21st century perspectives to the well-trodden legacy of jazz’s greatest composer.
Asked by Kennedy Center writer Miles Newton about Ellington’s inspiration on his career, Moran says:
"Ellington’s scale is so expansive that there is not one aspect of my career that he has not influenced. Let’s start with how Ellington plays the piano—ferociously inventive. His attack of the keys goes deeper than the key... into the root of the soil he plays from. When I think about Ellington’s compositions, I get a sense that he used his piano and band to map the world. His map was not only geographical, but emotional. This combination gave listeners a sense that Ellington was writing for and about them. He also collaborated widely with writers, fashion designers, choreographers, set designers, filmmakers, and (most famously) with his right hand, Billy Strayhorn. This wide sense of collaboration is something I mirror in my own life."
In that spirit of collaboration, Moran is joined for his weeklong residency devoted to Ellington’s music by the superbly dynamic New Orchestra of fellow SFJAZZ Resident Artistic Director emeritus and Bay Area jazz great Marcus Shelby.
An artist who shares with Moran a sympatico taste for filtering the influence of major figures of jazz history through a modernist lens, Shelby has used large ensembles inspired by the agile orchestras of Ellington and Wynton Marsalis as his primary performance vehicles for over 20 years.
Large scale suites including Port Chicago (2002), Harriet Tubman (2007), Soul of the Movement: Meditations on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (2011), Beyond the Blues: A Prison Oratorio (2015), and Black Ball: The Negro Leagues & The Blues (2019) cemented Shelby’s place as a major voice in large group composition and orchestration, and he has recently been a fixture at SFJAZZ during the holidays for his concerts focused on Ellington and Strayhorn’s 1960 reimagining of Tchaikovsky’s 1892 ballet The Nutcracker.
Together, Moran and Shelby create a whole larger than the sum of its parts, reveling in past masterpieces and ably demonstrating that in the right hands, they remain as timeless and contemporary as they were when they were written.
Jason Moran and the Marcus Shelby New Orchestra perform 2/6-9. Tickets and more information are available here.