My Conversation With Jason Moran
March 1999
By: Fred Jung

Being on the West Coast, it has been very difficult to hear any musicians that intrigue me live. Most musicians that are not backed by their label for a nationwide tour are unable to come to Los Angeles and play. Club owners are to blame sometimes (there are plenty here that have poor reputations among artists and their managers), the airfare to fly around from the Los Angeles basin to San Francisco to Seattle eats up most of the musician's pay (the hotels usually have them putting money out of their own pockets and they end up in the red), and even though I have been a life long resident of the City of Angels, I have to admit, the audiences down here are not always appreciative of an artist that isn't the latest craze. As tough as it may be to swallow, Los Angeles can be fair-weather at times. So, I am always genuinely excited when an artist that is the rage on the East Coast has the opportunity to come out to Hollywood. Jason Moran has been a player I have actually had the opportunity to see a couple of times and when I heard he had signed with Blue Note and was about to release his debut in April, I was pleased. Pleased that here was a young man who was not into all the pomp and circumstance. After all, Jason was a member of Greg Osby's band and if there is one cat in jazz who is the farthest thing from pomp, it's Osby. I was looking forward to sitting down and chatting with the fellow and hearing his take on things. We did just that, and here it is, unedited, uncut, and in his own words.

FJ: Let's start from the beginning.

I began music by playing classical piano at the age of seven. My parents had put myself and my two brothers in piano lessons, kind of a discipline thing. Then, for the next seven years I played classical piano. I quit because I hated piano and I hated music in general. I took about a year off and then I heard Thelonious Monk play and that's when I came back and decided to play jazz piano.

FJ: And your major influences at that time?

JM: Monk was my first, then came Horace Silver, and Bud Powell, and McCoy Tyner, and Herbie Hancock, those were my first major influences.

FJ: What was your first Monk record?

JM: I think it was a compilation called "The Composer" on Columbia and the first song I heard was "'Round Midnight." He was playing solo piano and it blew me away, totally.

FJ: What aspects of Monk's playing stood out?

JM: He had a really steady left hand. You never felt like you couldn't hear the rhythm or the beat. His rhythmic aspect was just supreme as far as other piano players were concerned. He could hold it all down by himself. We're hearing that, been hearing these compositions. He would also make a standard like "Just You, Just Me" and make it sound like it was his original composition. He just formed everything around him and his style. That's what really captured me, the way he was able to adapt any particular piece and play his own entire style upon it.

FJ: Let's get your thoughts on three of your musical teachers in particular, Jaki Byard, Muhal Richard Abrams, and Andrew Hill.

JM: Jaki Byard was my teacher at the Manhattan School of Music. He was the prime reason that I attended that school. So I came up to study with him because I'd heard him on Mingus records and so forth. Right before I came to school, I started studying his music. He embodied what every essential pianist should embody. He could grasp anything from stride to ragtime to some very free jazz. So when I came to study with him, he showed me the basics as far as stride piano was concerned, like really developing a strong left hand concept, which a lot of piano players lack now a days. To have the left hand thing was really essential. He had a lot of different harmonic concepts and larger intervals that he plays with that I've, kind of, adapted from him, and it was just his spirit. He has the old spirit in him and he was always imparting knowledge and stories of wisdom upon me. That's what I got from Jaki.

Andrew Hill, I met, I had been a huge fan of his, I guess, when I started college or right before I started college. First of all, his rhythm and his compositions also were far reaching. I got to meet him a couple of years ago and we started studying together or I started studying with him. He always wanted me to keep my mind open as far as if you get comfortable doing something, or a concept, or a style, if you start to get used to what you're playing, then it's time to change. It's time to try something different and try different concepts. Andrew really imparted that wisdom.

Muhal, he was, kind of, he's just like a workaholic. Every time I get with him, I'd go to his piano and he's always working on something new. He has this book of compositions that he's been working on since no telling when, but everyday he sits down at the piano and just plays. If he plays something that he likes, then he'll write it down. He has this really great work ethic and then along with his work ethic the compositions that he comes up with are just so unique compared to a lot of other people. He also has a contrapuntal system. He has a lot of classical systems that he uses when he composes music. Those three together, you really get a really wide view of how jazz is supposed to be or how you can approach the piano because they have everything in just those three piano players.

FJ: You're twenty-four.

JM: Right.

FJ: Your debut "Soundtrack to Human Motion" is on Blue Note, which was "the" label when you were growing up. It must be an affirmation on your capabilities as a player even this early on in your career, considering most young artists have to go through smaller labels such as Criss Cross and then get signed to the majors.

JM: That came about through working with Greg Osby. He was a proponent of my getting on the label. He really pushed hard. I was playing on a couple of his last records and they and they had heard me on those records and then they would come see us when I would be gigging with him like at the Sweet Basil. Actually, when we were playing at the Sweet Basil a couple of years ago, Bruce (Lundvall) came up to me after a set and was like, "Jason, let's do this." And I was ready. I said, "Well, this is like a great opportunity." I was never really rushing into trying to get a label. I said, "If it happens, it happens and if it doesn't, it doesn't." He approached me and I was more than willing to, just for documentation sake, just to document where I was in my development and get a group of musicians that I would love to record with and work with them. And so, I did. Sometimes, I still think, "Man, I'm on Blue Note Records!" My dad has this huge Blue Note collection and that's all I would listen to when I was growing up, through my teenage years and I still listen to a lot of Blue Note records because they have a lot of the classic records that came out at the time. A lot of their records were more progressive in the music sense than the other labels, besides, like Impulse! and maybe Atlantic with the Ornette (Coleman) records. Blue Note really had a vast variety.

FJ: What's with the title, "Soundtrack to Human Motion"?

JM: I'm, like, a big movie fanatic. I watch a lot of movies all the time. And I'm always listening to the soundtracks in the background, behind certain scenes or just the soundtrack in general, the pieces that they choose to support a scene. I was thinking that maybe I should try to title this, instead of being a soundtrack to a motion picture, a soundtrack to a motion human. I threw the words around. Me and my girlfriend threw the words around for a while and we came up with "Soundtrack to Human Motion". It works as a, I think of this record as a soundtrack to a person's daily life. This record represents a day in my life. The first track is when you wake up in the morning and the last track is when you go to sleep at night.

FJ: In that regard, what is an average day like for Jason Moran?

JM: This morning, I was up at six o'clock and I went to the gym (laughing), which is very rare, but I did it this morning. I woke up at six o'clock, then I came back and I watched a movie. It was a really corny movie, Halloween: H20, but it was good to see Jamie Lee Curtis and I like Michael Myers. Anyway, I watched that and I was cleaning up my room, then I put on another movie, In the Company of Men, and watched that and laughed at that. I watch a lot of flicks. I'm going to go rent two more movies in a little bit, after I do this interview. Then I'm going to go see a dancer where they put lasers on the dancer and you can track his body movement. You have these sheets of, like, white lines that outline his body, but he's not there. It's, kind of, like a silhouette and they show him dancing. I want to check that out. Then I'm going to come back home and watch another movie and then go to sleep.

FJ: Watch anything lately that you've liked?

JM: What did I watch? I watched this movie by this Japanese filmmaker, Takeshi Kitano, called Fireworks. It was great. That was like my second or third time seeing it. He's a very talent individual, period. In Japan, he's a huge star. He has a talk show. He's a comedian. He's also an artist and he's a filmmaker. He's a director, writer, actor, so he can do various things. This guy, Takeshi Kitano, is some of the most powerful work that I've seen in a while. The movie isn't that recent. It's out on video and the movie was in New York, maybe, last year sometime. Sonatine (written by, directed by, and starring Kitano) is another one of his. Then I watched an Akira Kurosawa film called Stray Dog (starring Toshiro Mifune) yesterday. That was really good too, that was my first seeing it.

FJ: Sonatine has a real Reservoir Dogs quality to it.

JM: Right, right, it does. But it's, like, more feelings oriented then Reservoir Dogs. You see these hit men who are acting like a bunch of kids. It was pretty hip.

FJ: Referring back to your debut album. Let's talk about the personnel on the recording.

JM: First of all, they played phenomenal, every one of them. They made it the easiest session that I've ever been a part of, by far. Starting with Eric Harlan, I went to high school with him also, and then he followed me up to college at the Manhattan School of Music and then he went on to do, he started gigging so he quit school. He just did a lot of gigs. We were always very tight and whenever we played together, we had a special chemistry that is lacking between myself and other drummers sometimes. We had a really good connection and on this record, he plays his butt off. It was great to play with him. We recorded on "Further Ado" with Greg, but that had been, really the last time we had played because he was in Greg's band and then he left to join Betty Carter's last band and went on to do other things. It was good to not only get back together again, but to play again.

Going on to Lonnie Plaxico, I met him a couple of years ago, actually about five years ago when I was in college and I did a gig in Harlem. That was the first time that I had met him and he was really cool and giving me advice on the scene and just being a man in perspective, and just being in New York City also. He was really cool and we had a really good connection then. We also met again on Greg's record "Further Ado" and I liked playing on that with him because he can hold it down. He can hold it down and then he can get loose with it also. He's played with everybody, a lot of the people that you can even think of, from Art Blakey to Dexter Gordon, vast amounts of cats, so he has this wisdom and knowledge of his instrument that some bass players lack. He has a maturity level. It is good to be with older musicians in the rhythm section because we're young and we're ready to just fire off at any given time, so it was good to have him around.

Stefon (Stefon Harris), we met in college also, at the Manhattan School of Music and it was great when we first met, we just met and we would always play together and always come up with concepts together and do all sorts of things. I wanted to have vibes because it adds a different effect rather than just piano all the time. So the vibes would give it a more earthy sound sometimes and it adds a definite warmth to the entire record. His playing on it is some of the best playing I think he's done that he's ever recorded. He really stepped it up on the record and I was really happy about that.

Greg (Osby), I've had a long relationship, actually, not that long. It's only been about two to three years and ever since we first met and I did the first tour with him, we've just gotten closer and closer and become more buddies than musicians who just talk to one another. He's given me a lot of knowledge and he's helped me expand my brain. When I first joined his band, he allowed me to really try out different concepts while playing with him that a lot of other band members wouldn't. He would let me really go for it on the bandstand. I got a chance to really find some things that I would never really try. Me and Greg have a great relationship just playing together and so I had to use him on the record. It was almost like my duty. I can't really think of anyone else that would really mesh that well with that group. It was my dream group with all of us coming together.

FJ: Is there a defining tune on the album?

JM: I think "Kinesics." It's a solo piano piece. That piece was totally improvisational that I came up with. It's kind of an afterthought to the piece before, "Jamo Meets Samo." I just think that because it was totally improvisational and that I came in and came up with this and recorded it and went back and listened to it and liked it so much that I had to have it on the record. Just that improvisational piece, really speaks to me. I like to record myself playing at my house and you never know what you're going to come up with and right then I didn't know that, I think, fantastic stuff happened. I think that one really defines where I am right now.

FJ: "Jamo Meets Samo," obviously, you are Jamo, but Samo was a tag name used by the underground New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, is that who you are referring to?

JM: Right, Samo is Jean-Michel Basquiat. He's an artist in the '80s who got very famous from working with like Andy Warhol and a host of other people, Keith Herring and a lot of that downtown scene. He's like one of my favorite artists of the era, lately. His work is so brutally honest. He was a brutally honest cat, it seems to me, through watching interviews and stuff. I've just always been a fan of his ever since I was in high school when I first saw his work and I was just amazed that he put out such a body of work in the short time, because he died tragically in his late twenties (Basquiat died of a heroin overdose in 1988), I think. He was phenomenal.

FJ: Is that kind of brutal honesty important to you?

JM: Yes, it is. If you don't, then you go around telling everybody that they sound good when they don't. I'm always open to somebody telling me, giving me criticism on my record or giving me criticism on anything that I do, because that can only help me. I can never really be mad at a bad review or if somebody doesn't like my record. My record is not going to be for everybody. That fact is already known to me, that everybody is not going to like it. It's not going to be for everybody. With that in mind, I'm always open to anybody's suggestions. It doesn't matter who it is. I can take what I want from it and throw the rest away.

FJ: The working band in jazz is slowly being eliminated in favor of so-called all-star bands, yet your new recording sounds like that of a working band. Is that due to the fact that you know each other so well?

JM: Yes, no doubt. I'm a fan of people just throwing together sessions because you never know what you'll find out, but I really like working with these musicians. You could throw me Ron Carter, and you could throw me Jack DeJohnette. It would be great to play with them, but I have a much better relationship playing with Eric and Lonnie then I do with those guys. Regardless of all the masters that are out there, this represents where I am right now in my life and it represents just those cats that I want to work with. It was just great to work with them, again.

FJ: Any touring plans for your album?

JM: Not officially, we're talking now about doing something in New York at the Jazz Standard in, I think, May or June and I definitely want to do a Texas tour. Hit Dallas, Austin, and Houston, and San Antonio. For right now, I really don't have that much coming up, not with my own band. I'm sure it will perk up sooner or later.

FJ: What have you got going on with other people's bands?

JM: Stefon, he's going into the studio in two weeks, so we're going to do his new record. I may be recording with Ravi Coltrane next week. Greg is doing another record right after we get back from this tour. That's about it. Oh, I'm doing something with Cassandra Wilson. That's about it.

FJ: Is that the first time you'll be working with a vocalist?

JM: No, I worked with a lot, I don't want to say a lot, I worked with some vocalists since college and working with Cassandra is, I wouldn't even say, well, it's working with a vocalist, but it's working with a much hipper vocalist because she's very open. We did this tour in Japan and she amazed me because she was able to go anywhere. I would throw her all kinds of messed up chords and she would go right with it and never look at me, like, "What are you doing over there?" And then start yelling at me. So I felt very, very comfortable working with her and I hope that will be a relationship that I can nurture for a while.

FJ: Is it a big transition to accompany a vocalist as opposed to a horn player?

JM: It can be. I don't feel that, not working with her. The way she works her voice and works the songs, it's almost as, better than most musicians that I've worked with. I never feel like I am accompanying a vocalist and I have to go into a certain bag because I can still be very much myself and not compromise any of my original abilities. I like working with her a lot just for that aspect.

FJ: You are a member of this Blue Note All-star, New Directions tour.

JM: Right, the New Directions tour. It features other members of the Blue Note roster like Stefon Harris, and Greg Osby, and also Mark Shim, a fabulous tenor player. We'll be going to twenty cities throughout the United States next month and what we'll do is, the band is coming together and we're going to rework some classic Blue Note songs like "Sidewinder" or "Song for My Father" or what have you. We're going to rework those and then bring in original compositions. We're going to be supported by Nasheed Waits on drums and Tarus Mateen on bass. We'll be hitting pretty much every major city within the next month and a half. We will just be bringing it to them all.

FJ: Where would you say your progression as an artist is right now?

JM: On a number?

FJ: Yes, let's say ten is you're a master of your instrument and one, you are a kid in school just tinkering around.

JM: Three. I'll be a three, Fred. When we played last week, it was the same band at the Sweet Basil and I just found so many things that I had never really tried before and I was like, "Man." So I already know that there's just so much more for me to venture into than what I've already dabbled in. It's just a matter of finding it out. I'll probably be at a three and to maybe a five or six for the rest of my life. I don't think I will ever really reach a peak. If I reach a peak, Fred, then let me know (laughing), because I want to keep going. I don't ever want to feel stagnant like, "Man, I'm getting used to what I'm playing." I will always know, kind of, where I want to go. I don't ever want to ever know that. I always want it to be very, very spontaneous, really to surprise myself and to surprise the audience and surprise the other band members on stage. It's just a steady progression.

FJ: Any future projects in mind?

JM: Not really, I mean, when this record comes out, I'm just going to dabble with what's going on. I know I probably won't record for a long while. It might be another year and a half. The transition right now is fairly big. I have in mind what I want to do on the next record. I know for sure I'm going to bring in this monster tenor player, Gary Thomas, on the session, because he has this other, worldly sound that no one can touch. I heard him play with, I've heard him many times before, but the last time I heard him live was with the Sam Rivers Big Band and he just blew me away in a short period of time. I know I'll have to use him on the next record. He's a good friend of Greg's also. They have a great chemistry, just from those two working together. So I'm going to be writing stuff for two saxophones, just to stretch out my writing some more. I'll probably have just a little bigger band than on the last record.

FJ: Speaking of writing, all the compositions on your debut album are your own. How important was that to you?

JM: Horace Silver was recording all of his songs. So it would only be appropriate that I would record most of my songs, with no disrespect to anyone else because there is none there. There is great admiration for what everyone else has written, but what I have written is entirely my own. I really wanted to express that on this record and probably for all the next records to come. It will be predominately original music, unless I say that I want to do a cover record and do a bunch of standards or something like that. For the time being, I know it's a lot of original music for me. I just feel that that's my duty to the music and to myself is to stretch the composition area.

FJ: Getting back to players that are unheralded.

JM: People like Muhal and the older musicians and Jaki Byard, they still don't get enough attention to me. Jaki Byard, I think is still one of the predominant piano players. He can pretty much wipe out anybody on the scene if you put them side by side. He can do anything he wants, technically, facility wise, and conceptually, so is Muhal, and that's why I always make it a point to mention those guys because I don't think they ever got their credit. Not that credit is very important to them, but I really think that more musicians, especially piano players, should really check them out, thoroughly.

FJ: If you were not playing jazz, what would you like to pursue?

JM: I have no idea. I did so many things in the summer when I would go home, from working at a Western Auto, which was a car shop, I don't know. I don't know and I think about that sometimes, Fred. I say, "I have no idea what I'd be doing." I don't want to think about it, really.

FJ: What other instrument, aside from the piano, fascinates you?

JM: The drums. I am infatuated with drummers also. They can make or break a group, first of all. Having a good drummer is great. Having a bad drummer can almost destroy you and you almost not want to play at all. The drums. I like the things that Roy Haynes, and Max Roach, and Jack DeJohnette, with the things that they could do, they could shape a group. They could shape your solo too. They could just instantly change the groove and instantly alter the way you're going to approach that improvisational part. Anybody who has that kind of control, that's pretty cool. I wouldn't mind being a drummer.

FJ: What would you like your musical legacy to show?

JM: I would like it to show a steady progression, that it was always altering and changing and going to a new level, kind of the way Coltrane did. You could chart his progress and just watch how he moved through every genre of jazz and then made his own. He just approached it in such a manner that no one else had. He changed the music for the century. To look back on my music, I would like to be able to chart my progress and be able to see that, "Oh, that's what I was working on then." It's very clear. You can hear it in the music.

FJ: Do you have a favorite tune?

JM: It would be that "'Round Midnight," that Thelonious Monk tune. I could sing that to myself all day long. It would be that one.

FJ: Favorite movie?

JM: My favorite movie would be The Godfather.

FJ: Why The Godfather?

JM: Fred, The Godfather, first of all, it's not that it's the mafia thing, but it's like the family thing. They have certain values that went back years and years and years. They tried not to change, although they had to change because people were getting killed and they tried to make money, but it was like, there were a lot of morals in that movie that I really like. That movie, when I saw it, I must have watched it like eighty, ninety times. I think it's the best one, Fred. It's the best one, The Godfather. It's a family thing, the family, la familia (laughing). That's my movie.

FJ: Describe yourself and your playing in one word.

JM: Umm. Umm. That would be it, U-M-M.

FJ: What?

JM: Because I'm just wondering, you know. It just shows a state of thinking. What if I tried that? Damn, she looks good, "Umm," situations that you say, "Umm," that's what it is. I'm going to say that for right now.

As a footnote to this conversation, Jason and I spoke of his time with Jaki Byard, who was found shot in his home. Jaki was a true genius at the keys and he will be sorely missed. My condolences to his family and all jazz fans.