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MUSICIANS
JASON MORAN
piano
Official website: www.jasonmoran.com
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“Moran is like no other pianist at work--his resonant attack has no soft edges and expresses little interest in harmonic variation--he is good news for jazz’s future.” - Gary Giddins, Village Voice Advice to the jazz purist #1: Quit pining for the good ol’ days when the music was “real”. Stop whining that after Tatum, Monk, Powell and their peers, nothing new can ever be played. That jazz only exists on reissues. See, same as time, the music waits for no one -- it irrevocably moves forward. Can the fronting and recognize that under-30 simbas like Jason Moran’s trio, The Bandwagon are bringing on jazz’s new good ol’ days” with a quickness. “The name “The Bandwagon” indicates a group of guys who enjoy playing and also an image of taking a ride together. When people jump on the bandwagon they rarely jump off.” - Jason Moran Advice to the jazz purist #2: Don’t trip out on the fact that Jason Moran’s new live album The Bandwagon was recorded in the very same Village Vanguard where Trane and Dexter laid down their sacred texts in days of old. No calculated attempt of conjuring up some of that old black magic here. Naw, The Bandwagon is simply about documenting one of the most innovative trios (Moran, Tarus Mateen; bass, Nasheet Waits; drums) in jazz today playing in the premiere jazz room in New York City. “The Village Vangard is special”, muses Jamo. “The sound is perfect. The room is very tight - Tarus is three feet away, Nasheet is four feet away. We’re right on top of each other but we have this chemistry, this conversation that is going on. A lot of words are being spoken at one time and you can feel how the audience is reaching for it.” Culled from the trio’s six-day stint at the Vanguard late last year (November 26th - December 1st 2002) The Bandwagon is a winning combination of audacious new originals (“Ringing My Phone”, “Straight Outta Istanbul”, “Infospace”), fresh takes on the band’s book and a subtle, Third Stream take on Brahm’s “Intermezzo, Op. 118, N° 2”. “Ringing My Phone” and “Infospace” use sampled phone conversations as improvisational triggers. In the former, the eccentric cadence of a Turkish woman’s looped soundbite generates a fervidly complex, rapid-fire roundelay of tangential and intersecting individuall/group improvisations; the latter, an exhilarating, breakneck race-to-the-wire between the trio and a woman spitting Chinese. “These looped pieces are totally different from anything else we would perform in a normal set”, notes JM. “It catches not only ourselves off guard in perfonning it, but it catches the audience off guard. So everybody has to let go of what are the stereotypes of what we think we should be playing and hearing in a jazz club. So there’s a sense of breaking ground. That’s how you get growth as an artist that you continue to shock not only yourself but you continue to shock those around you.” “Moran is blessed with the courage of his own convictions. He presents himself as a child of his time - part scavenger and part seer, fluent in the cut/paste/splice devices of hip hop production and yet at home with the trippier realms of Bartok and Stravinsky and Bjork. He swings mightily, too.” - Tom Moon, Jazziz The true measure of how great Moran and his Bandwagon mates are really are can be found within its remakes of the older tunes. The tightly wound “Another One” is now a sprawling, molten mass of erupting piano clusters, sulphurous bass runs and fulminating traps. “Out Front” has morphed from a humble tribute to Moran’s mentor Jaki Byard into a gleeful fusion of puckish stride and free-swinging avant garde piano. “Gentle Shifts South”’s dream-like blend of wistfully meditative solo piano and the muted voices of his grandparents trumps Moran’s original take. “Body & Soul” is the trio’s definitive version. Once a jivey waltz, “Gangsterism On Canvas” now a straightahead jazz dance. Blown up to 9:34, the album ending “Planet Rock” is now a subtly menacing combination of Iberian schadenfreude and thugged out swagger. Jason Moran was bom in Houston, Texas on January 21, 1975. Although he began studying classical piano in the first grade, young Jason soon rebelled against the disciplinary pressures of the craft. What turned him around was his father’s collection of Monk LPs. Monk’s music not only inspired him to continue his lessons, it ignited an irresistible desire to become a jazz musician. By the age of 16, Jason was both a member of the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts’s jazz big band and leader of its jazz quartet. In ‘93, the high school grad moved to New York to study with legendary pianist/composer Jaki Byard at the city’s famed Manhattan School of Music. Over the next four years, Byard became Moran’s mentor, muse, griot, friend and guardian angel -- the most profound influence on his musical and personal lives. Equally key to his musical/philosophical development were private studies with AACM founder Muhal Richard Abrams and Andrew Hill. In ‘97, Moran’s Houston homeboy and drummer Eric Harland recommended him to alto saxophonist Greg Osby. Discovering they were kindred spirits, Osby hired the pianist for a European tour. Post-tour, the pianist made his recording debut on Osby’s Blue Note release Further Ado. Two years later, Osby produced the pianist’s solo debut for Blue Note, Soundtrack to Human Motion. Featuring Osby, Harland and bassist Lonnie Plaxico, the album topped New York Times jazz critic Ben Ratliff’s end-of-the-year list. Since that time, Moran’s career has progressed in leaps and bounds. In 2000, he recorded his sophomore joint Facing Left (first album with Mateen and Waits) and the Blue Note super session New Directions (with Osby, Stefon Harris and Mark Shim for a cd and ground-breaking tour). 2001‘s Black Stars, featuring saxophone colossus Sam Rivers was an artistic/critical/commercial breakthrough. The following year, Moran released bis universally acclaimed solo piano album Modernistic. The brilliant, rea! time conflation/distillation of all the magic that has come before, The Bandwagon heralds the shape of greater things yet to come. “I’m afraid of my records sounding the same”, agrees Moran. “I would consider that almost a step backwards to kind of repeat something l’ve done before. I think we are all at an age in our lives where we mature or we change quicker than milk goes bad.” All aboard. October 2003 European booking agent International Music Network For booking, contact EMMECI. |