by Tom Benton

Of the many 20-something jazz musicians making waves these days, pianist Jason Moran stands out. Though obviously and undeniably versed in the rich history of jazz piano, his voice is something highly original, blending the influence of those who've come before with the chatter of life at the end of the 20th century and a deep sense of harmonic and rhythmic adventure into a startling and highly original whole.

Raised in Houston and a graduate of the city's prestigious High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Moran discovered jazz in his teens, after a decade of classical training. In 1993 he moved to New York to study with Jaki Byard at the Manhattan School of Music (the next few years would also find him studying with such venerable iconoclasts as Muhal Richard Abrahms and Andrew Hill). Three years later, at the recommendation of HSPVA alum Eric Harland, Greg Osby hired the 21-year-old Moran, unheard. The two continue to play together frequently, and both Osby and drummer Harland performed on Moran's debut recording.

Moran's talents turned up in the bands of Cassandra Wilson and Steve Coleman before he was approached by Blue Note to record Soundtrack to Human Motion. Widely praised as one of the finest jazz debut recordings of the decade, Soundtrack to Human Motion was an ambitious and mature statement of purpose, which showcased Moran's talents as a composer, improviser and bandleader. It also introduced his deft ability to harvest exciting music from experimental approaches: one piece is based on Andrew Hill's "Smokestack" played backwards, while another utilized serialist composition techniques.

While Soundtrack to Human Motion featured a sax and vibes-fronted quintet assembled largely in the studio, Moran's second recording, Facing Left, documented a band with time under its belt, his trio with bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheed Waits. This return to the classic jazz piano format with a sympathetic band afforded Moran an entire new world of opportunities for exploration. Without another "lead" instrument, Moran's piano jumps to the foreground, navigating through a collection of originals, unsung jazz compositions (by Ellington and Byard), film music (from The Godfather and Yojimbo, a 1961 Japanese martial arts epic), and an ephemeral pop nugget by Icelandic songstress Bjork. Moran's newest recording, Black Stars, finds his trio joined by Sam Rivers, in a program of mostly originals penned by Moran with the seminal reed titan in mind. In preparation for his Austin appearance, Moran took the time to talk with Austin Downtown Arts about his life and his music.

ADA: Starting at the beginning, what was it like growing up and playing music in Houston?

JM: There were a lot of good musicians in Houston, but I wasn't really exposed to music on a deeper level until I was in my teens. I started going to summer jazz workshops with this guy, Conrad Johnson, a saxophone player who taught a lot of young musicians. And I started to get it together as far as playing jazz goes, because up until then I was only learning music via classical music. A good thing about Houston was that when bands would go on tour, be it Joe Henderson or Branford Marsalis or Roy Haynes, they would come through Houston, so you could still hear a lot of really good music from national acts. There wasn't a whole of straight-ahead jazz going on. Most of it was kind of smooth jazz-oriented or funk-oriented, rather than hard-core jazz stuff. But there were some clubs where you could go sit-in, so there was always a chance to go play with guys better than you. There was at the time, as is evident now, a kind of scene down there, just an influx of students learning jazz, and they all turned out to be really good. It was fruitful for us to be around other kids who were as into it as we were.

ADA: You've obviously put in a lot of time with Bandwagon, your working trio with bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheed Waits. How did this get started?

JM: We'd played together with Stefon Harris and on the Blue Note New Directions tour, a 20-city tour throughout the US, and by the end of that tour we were a unit. The trio was really starting to develop a rapport with regards to playing harmony and playing time and tempo, shifting things back and forth almost telepathically. After all of that we started just playing as a trio on occasion. I'd get a gig and want to do a trio thing to test myself to see if I could sustain my own interest for an hour or two hours. And when I decided to do the second record that was what I had in mind. It didn't end up how I had it in mind at first, but it turned out great.

ADA: What do Tarus and Nasheed bring to the band?

JM: What Nasheed brings to the music as a whole is a traditional sound but not in a traditional way. The things he does with color and tempo, he accompanies in a way where he doesn't get in the soloist's way, but instead provides a lot of options. It becomes a conversation between all of the members of the band. Tarus is always moving back and forth between holding everything down and getting into the thick of things. Everyone's role in the band is constantly shifting; Nasheed may go on a rant while Tarus and I hold everything down, and then Tarus goes on a rant. It's a constantly changing thing as the music grows and develops. When the outfield goes to the infield and the pitcher goes to play catcher, it gives the music a very turbulent sound.

ADA: The "piano trio" has a lot of history to it, obviously. Where do you think this group fits in that context?

JM: Some trios can really get this clean piano trio sound, which is kind of what the piano trio is based on. Take Earl Garner's Trio, the way they swing is very clean. Excellent music, the highest form a trio can get, but I've always thought that there could be an alternative to doing everything so clean.

I'm not a technically clean pianist. My favorite piano player is Thelonious Monk, which kind of gives you dirt right off the bat. I'm starting with a different choice of rhythm and comping style than a person whose favorite piano player is Wynton Kelly. My favorite trios were McCoy Tyner and Bill Evans and Herbie Nichols, people who had this alternate way of playing. But they still had a very classy sound -- and I'm not a classy guy. My upbringing was in hip-hop, so I think I have a more heavy-handed approach to music some of the time. I wanted to make something more rhythmically turbulent! Of course, you always like to have balance. You don't want to have a record full of nothing but mumbles and jumbles, so there's times where you have to go to the totally opposite. But there are many trios in many cities around the world, playing in restaurants and hotels, who give the piano trio the reputation as dinner music, really straight and really clean. And I didn't want my music to sound that way. And no musician really does. They want their music to hold some integrity, and my way to do that was to find some musicians who felt similarly about music as I did, and to work at it until it becomes singular in approach.

ADA: Facing Left includes a huge variety of material not written by you. Is there any overwhelming criteria for choosing songs you'll play?

JM: The melody, believe it or not. Everybody has their favorite songs, but sometimes it's hard to pin down why you really like it so much. Like the first song on the record, Ellington's "Later"; when I first heard it I thought, "A rapper should sample this." At the time I was just feeling it, not really taking it in as a great composition (of course, it is a great composition!), while the next tune is based on a Japanese person's voice. And next there's Bjork's "Joga." I don't really like to play songs that I don't internally feel, that I don't feel aligning with my spine, 'cause then you're cheating yourself as far as the emotional content of each piece. Though sometimes I'll be playing with Greg Oby and he'll choose a song that I just think is really corny, but by the time you really get to the improvisation and can get past the corny aspect of it and really try to connect with the other players, it becomes a whole other piece. But on my record, I really have to be in to love with a tune to approach it. I try to avoid listening to people who tell you, "Oh, you should do Burt Bacharach tunes!" That's not me. I don't think it is, but you never know. Maybe I'll fall in love with Burt Bacharach's songs and I'll do a record of his pieces, but not until that day.

ADA: Your newest recording features your trio with Sam Rivers. What was the motivation to get him in the studio?

JM: First, his playing alone. I had him playing everything he can possibly play! The guy is one-of-a-kind. There aren't too many musicians who can play all those instruments that well and compose and be a bandleader. His spirit and energy! He basically finished everything he was going to record on the first day. The second day he just came back to hang. The cat is 77-years-old. He doesn't have to get up at 8 in the morning and go to the studio for another 8 hours! But he wanted to so he did it anyway, and after he did that he played an entire week at a club up here in New York. When I went to see him, the guy is jumping around the stage, so in love with playing music and so in love with creating music. I only wish that I have half that energy when I get to that age.

He told me that on some days he'll sit and compose for four or five hours at a time and he'll have to remember to get up or else his legs will fall and he'll have to remember to get up or else his legs will fall asleep. And he'll still be sitting there composing! I don't know any musicians like that! The only cats I know like that are 60- or 70-years-old. I'm not like that, Greg Osby's not like that, Steve Coleman's no like that, and I don't know anybody who's that dedicated to the music. I think a lot of it has to do with the social situation at that time, that they really had to rely on their music rather than what was going on around them. Also, they learned to create this music with each other. There weren't any book methods for them to learn from, like "How to Play Bebop" or "How to Compose." They created this whole new language themselves.

So it's a totally different thing from my experience of learning and listening to records from that era versus a guy who created that language. And it's a totally different approach. I don't want to say more original, but we're still basing a lot of our compositions and improvisations on methods that were created way back. There have been some evolutions, but most of it is still tied to that era, the fifties and sixties or the forties and thirties. There have been a lot of advances but nothing that's been so ground-breaking.