Jason Moran Quotes

Jason Moran

Profession : Musician

Birth : January 21, 1975

My killer crossover project would be to combine Bjork and Grace Jones with the West Coast rappers and create this massive music. That's, like, one of my dreams.

Jason Moran

You make a record because you have to chart your progress, not only for yourself, but for your audience.

Jason Moran

I kind of want to get the music back on a road it hasn't been on for a while. I want to promote the arts as part of the American diet.

Jason Moran

Freedom is the thing that has attracted me most to jazz. Within improvisation, you're really able to express something that maybe I'm not so adept at expressing via language. So I develop a language through the instrument to tell stories. So it's kind of this freedom of thought and freedom of expression that kind happens.

Jason Moran

America used to be proud of abstraction, and we have fallen away from it. The future depends on people trying to promote that abstract thinking. Not just in relation to music and jazz and the arts, but the economy, social strife, tension between people.

Jason Moran

As an improviser, my nature is to take a theme and constantly rework it.

Jason Moran

I feel like I'm a torchbearer for jazz, fostering its tradition but its future, too.

Jason Moran

I am a huge fan of Adrian Piper: how she works, how she reveals her process in the work, how she writes about it.

Jason Moran

I have that huge print from Pollock by the piano because the influence is reciprocal. He was into hearing music while he created, and I sometimes do the opposite. I'm influenced by everything from an ant to a dream.

Jason Moran

Pianos - if they don't like what you're saying, then they won't talk back to you. And you want it to talk back to you.

Jason Moran

As a listener, we're looking for that person who kind of excites the molecules within us - who knows how to tell the story that resonates deeply to our core and almost prompts us into action. Fats Waller has been that person for decades. When people need a lift, sometimes they go to him. I know I do.

Jason Moran

Usually, when I see films that don't have any score attached to them, I think they're beautiful. I love just the naked sound of the voice. That's already music.

Jason Moran

I'm lazy. I don't practice enough. I do other stuff. I'm not a musician's musician, and I don't necessarily know if I want to be. When I hear something and want to work on it, then that's what my project will be.

Jason Moran

Jazz musicians don't make any money, so I might as well make some on the market. I pick my own stocks - Microsoft, Dell - the tech stocks, the breadwinners.

Jason Moran

Bjork's album, 'Homogenic,' it's got beats, strings, traditional Icelandic stuff. That's my benchmark for what an album should sound like, right up there with Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme' and Marvin Gaye's 'What's Going On.'

Jason Moran

I used to watch those rock videos where they would chainsaw the piano. And I thought, 'That's what I want to do.' I thought classical music was corny.

Jason Moran

From being a teacher and educator, I see the state of the music through the eyes of an 18-year-old coming on to the scene, and we want to make sure it stays intact. With my generation, it's our duty to do that.

Jason Moran

Confidence is the key. When you're playing something new, find the part you know very well and play it really strong. That'll make you believe that you really do know it.

Jason Moran

I see how people look at me, all around the world. They see something because of the race I belong to. I have to understand that and put it into my music.

Jason Moran

I play a Monk song, it's like you get possessed. And then you have to break that spell. You have to remind yourself that you are an individual, or that you aren't Thelonious Monk.

Jason Moran