Lineage Podcast

Lineage Podcast


Jason Moran + Alicia Hall Moran - Part Two

July 06, 2021

Jazz pianist, composer, and artist Jason Moran was born in Houston, TX and earned a degree from the Manhattan School of Music. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2010 and is the Artistic Director for Jazz at The Kennedy Center. His 21 year relationship with his trio The Bandwagon (with drummer Nasheet Waits and bassist Tarus Mateen) has resulted in a profound discography for Blue Note Records and Yes Records, a label he co- owns with his wife, singer and composer Alicia Hall Moran.

Alicia Hall Moran, mezzo-soprano, is a multi-dimensional artist performing and composing between the genres of Opera, Art, Theater, and Jazz.  Her solo albums, Heavy Blue and Here Today featuring the band Harriet Tubman, and live touring performances like Breaking Ice (shows for and about the ice since 2016), the motown project (her meditation on the operatic strains mixed with Motown begun in 2009); Black Wall Street (since 2016 ); and large-scale co-commissions with her husband Jason Moran.

Jason and Alicia’s long-standing collaborative practice is groundbreaking; as named artists in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, they together constructed BLEED, a five-day series of performances stretching from readings to wellness to a ring shouts.  In 2015, they participated in the Venice Biennnial curated by the late Okwui Enwezor. Recently they created Two Wings: The Music of Black America in Migration for Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium. They have collaborated with major art world figures such as Adrian Piper, Joan Jonas, Glenn Ligon, Adam Pendleton, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, Xaveria Simmons, Bill T. Jones and Kara Walker.