Jason Moran, jazz pianist and composer, was born in Houston, TX in 1975 and earned a degree from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Jaki Byard. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2010 and is the Artistic Director for Jazz at the Kennedy Center. Moran has recorded nine critically acclaimed albums for Blue Note Records, the latest All Rise: A Joyful Elegy for Fats Waller. He has recorded with Cassandra Wilson, Charles Lloyd, Bill Frisell, Sam Rivers, Meshell N’degeocello, and many others, and scored Ava DuVernay’s Oscar nominated film Selma. Moran has a long-standing collaborative practice with his wife, the singer and Broadway actress Alicia Hall Moran; as named artists in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, they together constructed BLEED, widely hailed as groundbreaking in the music and performance realm. Their collaboration Work Songs was commissioned by the 72nd Venice Art Biennial. Moran currently teaches at the New England Conservatory in Boston.