For 20 years, Jason Moran and Alicia Hall Moran have carefully balanced their artistic and life partnerships. Their respective bodies of work as individual artists have earned applause around the world. Likewise, their combined talents have earned much acclaim from critics and audiences alike.
Soon, the husband and wife duo will share their insights on collaboration and innovation (among other topics) with audiences during the 2015 Mitchell Artist Lecture at the University of Houston.
Presented by the University of Houston’s Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, the event is set for Sept. 16 at UH’s Moores Opera House (Entrance 16 off Cullen Boulevard). A reception at 6 p.m. will kick off the evening, followed by the lecture at 7 p.m. Admission to the lecture is free, but reservations are required. Reservations can be made online.
The Houston-born Jason Moran emerged as a jazz visionary in the late 1990s. After honing his talents at the Houston High School for Performing and Visual Arts and Manhattan School of Music, Moran was in demand as a player and ultimately as a recording artist for the legendary Blue Note Records. His recordings have earned critical praise, and he’s expanded his avant-garde playing style to projects based on visual art, as well as soundtracks (including the score for “Selma”). His participation in the Mitchell Artist Lecture Series is part of a multi-year residency hosted jointly with chamber music and jazz presenter, Da Camera. Next year, Moran will debut a new interdisciplinary project as part of the Mitchell Center’s CounterCurrent festival.
Alicia Hall Moran is a talented mezzo-soprano whose performance as Bess in the national tour of “Porgy and Bess” helped propel her into the public consciousness. Hall Moran has served as artist-in-residence at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and her talents have been commissioned by The Kitchen and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and ArtPublic for Miami Art Basel. She also is among the artists-in-residence for cutting edge music center National Sawdust.
The Morans have extended their artistic reach beyond to collaborate on multiple projects including the recent “Work Songs” featured in Jason Moran’s installation, “STAGED,” at the 2015 Venice Biennale. In 2012, the couple collaborated on “BLEED”, an installation containing a series of live performances as part of the Whitney Biennial.
The Mitchell Artist Lecture Series spotlights artists whose work spans a range of disciplines and has made a lasting impact on the global creative landscape. Dance visionary Bill T. Jones launched the series in 2013. Last year, the series featured groundbreaking multimedia artist Laurie Anderson.