Jason Moran
Sept 20, 2019–Jan 5, 2020
Collaborations
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Collaboration has been central to Moran’s experiments, and among the many artists with whom he has collaborated include The Bandwagon (Tarus Mateen and Nasheet Waits), Stan Douglas, Lizzie Fitch, Theaster Gates, Joan Jonas, Glenn Ligon, Julie Mehretu, Ashland Mines (Total Freedom), Alicia Hall Moran, Adam Pendleton, Adrian Piper, Lorna Simpson, Ryan Trecartin, Kara Walker, and Carrie Mae Weems.
Theaster Gates and Jason Moran and The Bandwagon (Tarus Mateen and Nasheet Waits)
Excerpt from Looks of a Lot, 2014
Theaster Gates, and Jason Moran and The Bandwagon (Tarus Mateen and Nasheet Waits), performance still of Looks of a Lot, 2014. Performed at Symphony Center, Chicago, May 30, 2014. Performers: Jason Moran and The Bandwagon (Tarus Mateen and Nasheet Waits), Katie Ernst, Ken Vandermark, Theaster Gates, and the Kenwood Academy Jazz Band; film direction: RoundO Films (Radiclani Clytus, Gregg Conde, and Anthony Gannon). Commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Courtesy the artists and RoundO Films, New York. Photograph © Todd Rosenberg
Looks of a Lot, a collaboration between Jason Moran and artist Theaster Gates, explores themes of violence, absence, loss, and the resilience of the human spirit. Working with the Kenwood Academy Jazz Band in Chicago, as well as multi-reedist Ken Vandermark and vocalist Katie Ernst, Moran created a layered multimedia and jazz improvisation project. Gates’s sculptures made from salvaged materials served as music stands, and Moran sat on another sculpture, a multi-tiered shoe-shine chair, as he played a hand-cranked music box with a prepunched musical score. Utilizing traditional and nontraditional instruments, such as vintage minstrel windup toys and horns, Looks of a Lot brings together multiple narratives that resonate with the Chicago landscape. The excerpts presented here feature both concert and documentary footage detailing the process of collaboration.