Swatting the Comforts of Tradition- Jason Moran at the Iridium
NEW YORK TIMES In Performance, October 16, 2001
By: Ben Ratliff

Jason Moran started his first-night set last Tuesday with "Another One," built around a descending four-chord sequence that doesn't modulate into anything resembling a bridge, and within minutes his music had the charge of a statement.

Mr. Moran, on his third album (the new "Black Stars," on Blue Note) and still under 30, has made an end-run around the dominant mainstream jazz piano conventions of the 1960's and 70's: the time of Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner, those giant autobahns that seemingly all young pianists must travel. Without wholesale theft, Mr. Moran reaches further back and outside.

His trio, called Bandwagon - which will continue at Iridium, Broadway and 51st Street, through Sunday - takes an unusual approach to lining out these pieces built on small melodies. Last Tuesday's set was a blending of volatile energies: Mr. Moran's strong chords, sometimes gently and decorously played, sometimes motored with a clipped and heavy left-hand rhythm; Tarus Mateen's percussive bass playing, moving warily around the tonal center with its controlled low boil of string plucks and buzzes; and Nasheet Waits's drumming, a whirl of accents that doesn't forsake pulse and swing.

Working in agreement, they changed tunes at a run, choking the tempo and then turning it loose, altering the direction. Even working alone in spots, Mr. Moran's narrative strategy was fractious, setting down small ideas and then swatting them away; everything was anchored by a melodic idČe fixe.

Nonstandard repertory choices are part of his statement; the set included Ellington's "Kinda Dukish" and "Single Petal of a Rose," Ravel's "Tombeau de Couperin," Jaki Byard's wayward boogie-woogie blues "Out Front," Bjork's "Joga" and Thelonious Monk's "Skippy," which Mr. Moran yoked to his own "Skitter In."

These players grew up with hip- hop, and if you listen closely you can hear it, especially in Mr. Waits's dialogue of snare-drum and high-hat, meting out beats with a rapper's wordy flow. But you can also hear it intellectually, as a new sort of manifesto, one that throws aside the comforts and some of the excesses of tradition; Mr. Moran has done some rethinking. The result is neither ingratiating music nor particularly iconoclastic, just serious and directed, and some of the best live jazz around now.