Jason Moran

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Jazz pianist, composer, and performance artist Jason Moran is deeply invested in reassessing and complicating the relationship between music and language. His extensive efforts in composition, improvisation, and performance are all geared towards challenging the status quo while respecting the accomplishments of his predecessors. Moran’s partnerships and music-making with venerated and iconic visual artists is extensive. He has performed and recorded with jazz masters and his work with his trio, The Bandwagon, has resulted in a profound discography.

Jason Moran (b.1975) earned a degree from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Jaki Byard. Moran was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2010 and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2022. He is the Artistic Director for Jazz at The Kennedy Center and Curator at the Park Avenue Armory. Moran currently teaches at the New England Conservatory. Recent institutional solo exhibitions include, Jason Moran: Black Stars: Writing in the Dark, Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA (2022-2024), Bathing the Room with Blues, The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2021-22), and Jason Moran, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2018), which traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Group exhibitions include the Whitney Biennial, the Venice Biennale, and Soft Power at San Francisco Museum of Fine Art. In 2023, Moran curated the inaugural permanent exhibition, Here To Stay, at The Louis Armstrong Center in Queens, NY.

2025 SCA Public Programming is made possible with generous support from PRADA.

This program is funded with additional support from Guy-Karim and Maria Christina Caland Puymartin.

Dinner

After the lecture we invite members to a dinner reception with the artist at Ema, a Mediterranean restaurant in Chicago’s River North.