{"id":5620,"date":"2016-01-10T17:16:54","date_gmt":"2016-01-10T17:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/?p=5620"},"modified":"2016-01-10T17:16:54","modified_gmt":"2016-01-10T17:16:54","slug":"at-home-with-the-morans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2016\/01\/10\/at-home-with-the-morans\/","title":{"rendered":"At Home With The Morans"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jason<\/a>
Jason Moran and Alicia Hall Moran, as photographd by Dawoud Bey<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nI got a chance to sit around the kitchen table at the Harlem home of pianist Jason Moran<\/strong> and singer Alicia Hall Moran<\/strong>, for this interview piece<\/a>\u00a0in The Wall Street Journal. The piece was ostensubly pegged to the release of Hall Moran’s debut CD, released on a new imprint the couple established together\u2014a worthy release that celebrates the pure essence of Hall Moran’s voice as it blurs lines between genres and toys with aural textures
\nBut the Journal piece really was a chance to check in on a remarkable couple who absorb and radiate cultural details with remarkable energy and insight, and whose presence in New York recalls a moment when Harlem was full of families that made art out of community and community out of art. I’ve known them both for more than a decade and it’s been inspiring and educational\u2014about music and marriage\u2013to see how husband and wife affect each other’s experience and expression.
\nWhen I asked Did you open musical doors for each other<\/em>?\u00a0Alicia said this:<\/p>\n

Jason took me to hear Cecil Taylor and Henry Threadgill. Those doors needed opening for me. But on a deeper level, he helped me grasp how important each individual instrument and personality is in music.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And Jason told me:<\/p>\n

Dating a girl who knew Western classical music inside and out\u2014who felt it\u2014was a new kind of education. She taught me that Alban Berg was as soulful as Duke Ellington. She helped me focus on narrative. As a jazz musician, living life with someone who always demands a story makes you check everything you\u2019re going to play.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And Jason pointed out that Alicia helped him think more deeply about the idea of narrative in his own music. He said:<\/p>\n

Jazz instrumentalists once played with a\u00a0sense of narrative but now that\u2019s mostly not true. And in school\u00a0they weren\u2019t teaching you how to play a story. Singers always have to tell a story\u2014in English or German or whatever. We instrumentalists don\u2019t, and though there was a generation that said you really have to learn the lyrics, it ain\u2019t really a rule out here for success. So living life with someone who\u2019s always trying to tell a story or who regularly asks\u00a0‘What do you mean by that,’\u00a0makes you rethink certain things.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That last part didn’t make it into the article, but here’s the complete text:
\nWhen Alicia Hall Moran<\/a> made her debut as artist-in-residence at Brooklyn\u2019s National Sawdust<\/a> venue, she decided to tell the audience about her life with her husband\u2014as she described it, \u201cbetween the piano and the washing machine.\u201d
\nShe had sung in a gloriously trained voice, tinged with blues feeling, played some piano and collaborated in somewhat free-form fashion with two guitarists and a drummer. Then she begin to share.
\nSeated in the fifth row, her husband, the jazz pianist Jason Moran<\/a>, chuckled aloud at an inside joke she told about composer Johannes Brahms. He nodded in vigorous assent when she sang along with a recording of \u201cBelieve Me,\u201d a track from her new album, \u201cHeavy Blue.\u201d She will celebrate that release in performance at National Sawdust on Sunday.
\nAs producer, Mr. Moran helped craft the unusual sonic textures that often frame her voice on that recording; he also plays on two tracks. The release announces the couple\u2019s new joint venture, Yes Records, marking Mr. Moran\u2019s departure from the estimable Blue Note label and Ms. Moran\u2019s first foray into recording her own music.
\nSeparately, each has achieved distinction. She recently starred in the nine-month national tour of \u201cThe Gershwins\u2019 Porgy and Bess.\u201d He has been among jazz\u2019s most invigorating forces for more than a decade and was awarded a MacArthur \u201cGenius Grant\u201d in 2010.
\nThe two met at Manhattan School of Music<\/a> in 1995, where she studied classical voice and he was in the jazz program. They married in 2003. Their careers have been marked by a desire to bridge disciplines\u2014engaging with choreographers, theatrical directors and especially visual artists. Increasingly, these interests have merged their creative paths. For this year\u2019s Venice Biennale, they co-designed a musical installation that explored work songs sung in prisons, fields and houses.
\nIn the living room of their Harlem apartment, where they are raising twin 7-year-old sons, the Morans discussed how their life together has shaped their approaches to music.
\nWSJ: How would you each describe the person you met at a conservatory 20 years ago?
\nAM: He was this cute guy in dirty khakis.
\nJM: She was a long-legged, short-haired feminist. And that was not common at Manhattan School of Music.
\nWere you from separate worlds, aesthetically speaking?
\nJM: Yes, but one thing we had in common was good hip-hop of the late \u201990s: A Tribe Called Quest, the early stuff from the Roots, Biggie Smalls.
\nAM: And we could create together. We\u2019d sit in practice rooms that had two pianos and play together.
\nJM: And I\u2019d think, \u201cThis girl can improvise in ways that are shocking.\u201d
\nDid you open musical doors for each other?
\nAM: Jason took me to hear Cecil Taylor and Henry Threadgill. Those doors needed opening for me. But on a deeper level, he helped me grasp how important each individual instrument and personality is in music.
\nJM: Dating a girl who knew Western classical music inside and out\u2014who felt it\u2014was a new kind of education. She taught me that Alban Berg was as soulful as Duke Ellington. She helped me focus on narrative. As a jazz musician, living life with someone who always demands a story makes you check everything you\u2019re going to play.
\nWhat inspired you to create this new label together?
\nAM: It\u2019s a musical experiment, but it\u2019s also an experiment in our relationship, as musicians and as a couple.
\nJM: In one way it\u2019s like a family business, low-key and personal. But it\u2019s also a way to address a new context for distributing what we create. Our model is simple: Prepare, record, release. That\u2019s it. And somehow, the music will find its way to you.
\nThe song \u201cOpen Door,\u201d which was straightforward in live performance, takes very different form on the recording. How did that happen?
\nJM: \u201cOpen Door\u201d is Alicia\u2019s composition, but that track is also straight-up collaboration. She sang it and played piano for 45 minutes. A great song can retain its core no matter what you do. So I looped parts of it and processed it in ways that reflect where pop-music production has gone in the past decade, and that connects to the music we go to hear and talk about all the time. It\u2019s sort of a remix, only it\u2019s the original form. Alicia let me do that.
\nAM: No, I asked you to do that. Because I wanted it to be a fantasy\u2014the kind of fantasy only we can dream up together.
\nDo you borrow ideas from each other?
\nAM: He just steals mine, left and right. When he composed the score for the film \u201cSelma,\u201d I told him there was also a wife there, and you can play her story. You can make that choice. When the reviewers praised him for doing that, I thought, \u201cI told him to.\u201d But I didn\u2019t do it. He did it.
\nAre you always supportive of each other?
\nAM: No. Jason recorded one song, \u201cMoran Tonk Circa 1936,\u201d that I hate. I told him so. But I celebrate not liking it because it\u2019s a real, living part of him.
\nJM: The test is when someone you love tells you, \u201cThat sucks,\u201d and you decide to do it anyway.
\n—
\n 
\nIs Harlem an important element of the life you share?<\/strong>
\n 
\nAM: Absolutely\u2014just the architecture, the pace, and the river. But also certain moments. We walked with our kids in the stroller outside the Apollo Theater after Michael Jackson died, and then we walked home. That scene was emotional. It meant something.
\n 
\nJM: I told myself that because of the piano history in Harlem, this is the only neighborhood I can live in in New York City. Just for that principle alone.
\n 
\nJASON: Narraative . Jaz isntrumentalists once played with asnse of narrative but now, that\u2019smostly not ture. And in scholl they ain\u2019t teaching you how to play a story. And singers always have to tlll a story. In english or german or whatever. And we instrumentalists don\u2019t and though there was a genration that said, you really have to learn the lyrics, it ain\u2019t really a rule out here for success. So all of a sudden living life with someone who\u2019s always trying to tell a sotry or saying what od you eman by that all of a sudeen you have to recheck everytihgnin \u2013 everything. Oh shit! She showed me those popele<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I got a chance to sit around the kitchen table at the Harlem home of pianist Jason Moran and singer Alicia Hall Moran, for this interview piece\u00a0in The Wall Street Journal. The piece was ostensubly pegged to the release of Hall Moran’s debut CD, released on a new imprint the couple established together\u2014a worthy release … <\/p>\n

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