èßäAV

Moran is deeply invested in reassessing and complicating the relationship between music and language, and his extensive efforts in composition, improvisation, and performance are all geared towards challenging the status quo while respecting the accomplishments of his predecessors. His activity stretches beyond the many recordings and performances with masters of the form including Charles Lloyd, Cassandra Wilson, Archie Shepp, and the late Sam Rivers. The work with his trio, The Bandwagon (with drummer Nasheet Waits and bassist Tarus Mateen), has resulted in a profound discography over the past 25 years. He has released 18 critically acclaimed recordings and mined the histories of Thelonious Monk, Fats Waller, and James Reese Europe for his multi-media concerts. His collaborations with Alicia Hall Moran include Two Wings: The Music of Black America in Migration commissioned by Carnegie Hall, BLEED for the Whitney Biennial, and WORK SONGS for the Venice Biennial. The scope of Moran’s partnerships and music-making with venerated and iconic visual artists is extensive. He has collaborated with such major figures as Adrian Piper, Joan Jonas, Glenn Ligon, Kara Walker, Julie Mehretu, Adam Pendleton, and Kara Walker. He has scored Ava DuVerna’s films, SELMA and 13th. His collaborations with dance companies include Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet, Martha Graham, Ronald K. Brown’s Evidence Dance Company, and the New York City Ballet. As a visual artist, his solo exhibition, Jason Moran: Black Stars: Writing in the Dark is currently on view at Mass MoCA in North Adams through November 2024. Other recent institutional solo shows include Bathing the Room with Blues at The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2021-22), and Jason Moran, organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN in 2018, which traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (a monographic publication accompanied the exhibition). Moran has participated in major group exhibitions such as the Whitney Biennial, Venice Biennale, and Soft Power at San Francisco Museum of Fine Art.

Born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas, Parks was drawn to photography as a young man. Despite his lack of professional training, he won a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1942; this led to a position with the photography section of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in Washington, D.C., and, later, the Office of War Information (OWI). By the mid-1940s, he was working as a freelance photographer for publications such as Vogue, Glamour, and Ebony. Parks was hired in 1948 as a staff photographer for Life magazine, where for more than two decades he created some of his most notable work. In 1969, he became the first African American to write and direct a major feature film, The Learning Tree, based on his semiautobiographical novel. His next directorial endeavor, Shaft (1971), helped define a genre then referred to as Blaxploitation films. Parks continued photographing, publishing, and composing until his death in 2006.