On top of interviewing Charles Lloyd, I got to conduct a phone interview with pianist Jason Moran.
Pianist
Jason Moran has been with Charles Lloyd’s New Quartet since 2007. He broke onto
the scene ten years earlier, while in still in college, applying the lessons he
had learned from pianists like Andrew Hill and Jaki Byard to saxophonist Greg
Osby’s band. Since then he has built a considerable reputation as a bandleader
with his trio Bandwagon, has regularly topped DownBeat polls since 2003 and was
awarded a half million dollar MacArthur Fellowship three years ago.
Despite all
the accolades, Moran is not always searching for the spotlight. “I felt this
thing happening where I wasn’t getting to play with other musicians that I
wanted to play with,” says Moran. “I just wasn’t called because I was a
bandleader but I love a supporting role.”After getting back into playing as a
sideman with musicians like Don Byron, Moran joined forces with Lloyd through
his high school classmate, drummer Eric Harland.
Getting back
into the sideman role came easily to Moran and he wasn’t daunted by the history
of Lloyd’s piano bench. “When I got the gig, I only listened to a little bit of
his earlier material because I thought the way Keith Jarrett was playing on
there was so free and open. I was like ‘that means I can do anything.’ Plus,
Charles is free and open.”
That limitless
feeling has paid off with their partnership entering its seventh year and a
newly recorded duo album. “In a duo, you’re naked,” says Moran. “My role is to
deal with the space that the sound has. In one degree, I might say ‘I should
keep a tempo together for a sustained amount of time’ but keeping tempo does
not necessarily define a band’s sound. Making music that moves physically and
emotionally, that’s what the goal is. The beautiful thing about it is that we
don’t really have to explain much to each other. My main job in the duo setting
is to create an orbit for the music and if I want to, to create the black hole
as well.”
Moran
credits Santa Barbara with contributing immensely to that sense of telepathy. “Charles,
when he is in his home environment, is in a much more calm space. I live in New
York and it’s a rat race there. Literally. It makes me really appreciate going
to California. It’s a nice space for me to actually breathe, to inhale and
exhale. It really seemed quite right for
the music we were going to play so we could lean back into some of these songs.
When we turn up the heat, the heat is a different kind of fire there.”
Often that
kind of fire is a different approach to what Moran would do with his own
ensemble. Playing with Lloyd has forced Moran to get back to the roots of jazz accompaniment,
frequently digging into straight-ahead ballads on this most recent release.
“You have to really lay down the carpet with Charles,” says Moran. “And it has to
be a plush carpet for him to walk on.”
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