2025-2026 Season: Jason Moran
September 20 @ 7:30 pm
Jason Moran is a visionary jazz pianist, composer, and interdisciplinary artist whose work blends music with performance art, film, and visual media. Known for his adventurous spirit, he draws from a wide spectrum of influences including Thelonious Monk, hip hop, stride piano, classical, and avant-garde jazz. Moran first gained recognition through his collaborations with Greg Osby and released his debut album, Soundtrack to Human Motion, on Blue Note Records in 1999. He has since led the acclaimed trio, The Bandwagon, and created acclaimed projects such as In My Mind (a multimedia homage to Monk), Fats Waller Dance Party, and numerous commissions for major museums and international festivals.
Moran’s musical collaborators include Charles Lloyd, Cassandra Wilson, Joe Lovano, Don Byron, Steve Coleman, and Marian McPartland. He has also composed scores for choreographers Alonzo King and Ronald K. Brown and Ava DuVernay’s Selma and 13th. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship in 2010, Moran has taught at the New England Conservatory, held residencies at Juilliard and the Rhythmic Music Conservatory, and up until June served as Artistic Director for Jazz at the Kennedy Center.
Dubbed “the most provocative thinker in current jazz” by Rolling Stone, Moran plays a pivotal role in shaping jazz’s cultural legacy. Inspired by the music of Duke Ellington, he currently has embarked on a solo piano journey up what he calls “Mount Ellington,” celebrating Ellington’s contributions as a composer, pianist, and bandleader. Now, 125 years after Ellington’s birth, Moran reimagines his canon as a defining event, one that elevated jazz from populist entertainment to a national art form.
Opening for the Vermont Jazz Center 2025-2026 season, he will perform his solo piano project “Mount Ellington”, a tribute to Duke Ellington that reimagines the legendary composer’s work through his unique lens.
—Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker, reflecting on his solo performance
