The Showroom | In conversation: Jason Moran, Elio Villafranca & Project Co-Curators

This discussion includes an introduction to IN·FLO·RES·CENCE and each of the four speakers, followed by an hour-long conversation focussing on the cross-pollination of sound and object. It unfolds as a call and response: Elio responding to the 10 international composers, Jason responding to Elio's performances, and the curators responding to both of these musicians' own arts practices and experimental approaches to rhizomatic forms of storytelling.

JASON MORAN

Jazz pianist, composer, and artist Jason Moran was born in Houston, Texas in 1975. This boundary-bursting artist grounds his practice in the composition of jazz, bridging the visual and performing arts through spellbinding stagecraft. Heralded as one of the country’s leading jazz innovators, Moran transmutes his personal experience of the world into dynamic musical compositions that challenge the formal conventions of the medium. His experimental approach to art-making embraces the intersection of objects and sound, pushing beyond the traditional in ways that are inherently theatrical.

Image: Jason Moran. Photo: Clay Patrick McBride

Moran's activity stretches beyond the 15 critically acclaimed solo recordings and collaborations with artists from Cassandra Wilson to Kara Walker to Ava Duvernay showcase his reach. His 21 year relationship with his trio The Bandwagon (with drummer Nasheet Waits and bassist Tarus Mateen) has resulted in a profound discography for Blue Note Records and Yes Records, a label he co-owns with his wife, singer and composer Alicia Hall Moran. He is Artistic Director for Jazz at The Kennedy Center and teaches at New England Conservatory.

This intimate conversation frames the role of an art space to galvanise audiences around sound and art in critical and unconventional approaches; and the role of a musician as interpreter who amplifies individual voices and collective memories. Other topics brought to life include the limitations and unlimited potential of a short composition commission; the didactic power and unexpected experiences of playing music from home rather than in a concert hall or club; memories of the legendary Cecil Taylor, whose 1989 avant-garde album In Florescence gave inspiration to this project; the geopolitics of jazz as a source of poetic knowledge an interrogation of cultural; and global listening practices. Moreover, this discussion delves deeply into the historical, geographical, and ancestral sacrifices allowing for jazz to resonant around the world as a symbol for freedom, multiplicity, and collective syncopation, imparting how to code with rhythm, dream the impossible, create something new, and be an agent for social justice and sonic change.

Project Commissioner Reece Ewing and these two iconic NYC-based jazz pianists also shed further light on the symbolic decision to have IN·FLO·RES·CENCE communicated through the voice of a piano solo. They discuss the piano’s rich modern jazz tradition and how it intersects every music crossroad as a percussion instrument capable of creating a triad of rhythm, melody, and harmony that defies definition and represents freedom. The piano’s diverse genre-neutrality, international resonance, transatlantic history, roots in blackness, potential to communicate through melody vs. rhythm, and harmonic transcendence are all factors that empower Elio’s interpretations of the 10 commissions to take new shape in performances, find resonance in an arts context, and create an endless possibility of connections. It’s about bringing ideas, histories, and bodies – whether it be physically or digitally – together.

ELIO VILLAFRANCA

Steinway Artist, Pianist, and Composer Elio Villafranca, born in the province of Pinar del Río, Cuba, is a two-time Grammy nominee, winner of the 2018 Downbeat Critics Poll Rising Stars (Keyboard), and a recipient of the first Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC) Millennium Swing Award in 2014. Villafranca was classically trained in piano, percussion, and composition at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, Cuba and since his arrival to the U.S. in 1995 he’s been at the forefront of today’s pianists and composers, fusing classical and jazz with music from the African diaspora. Based in New York City, Villafranca is a jazz faculty member at The Juilliard School of Music, Manhattan School of Music, New York University, and Temple University in Philadelphia.

Photo: Jerry Lacay

ELVIRA DYANGANI OSE

Elvira Dyangani Ose is Director of The Showroom, London. She is currently affiliated to the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, the Thought Council at the Fondazione Prada and Tate Modern Advisory Council. Until November 2018, she served as Creative Time Senior Curator, where she most recently curated their 11th edition of their Summit. She is currently curating the publications of 34th Bienal De São Paulo and is the Curator for the PHotoESPAÑA, International Festival of Photography and Visual Arts.

Dyangani Ose was Curator of the eighth edition of the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary art, (GIBCA 2015) and Curator International Art at Tate Modern (2011 – 2014). Ose has published and lectured on modern and contemporary African art and has contributed to art journals such as Nka and Atlántica. She studied a Doctoral Degree in History of Art and Visual Studies at Cornell University, New York; has a MAS in Theory and History of Architecture from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona; and a BA in Art History from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

Photo: Christina Ebenezer
REECE EWING

Reece Ewing initially imagined IN·FLO·RES·CENCE as an art initiative whereby jazz could be shared and discovered in a context focusing on gathering, communion, critical discussion, provocation, and joy. He is a Filmmaker and Emmy nominated and award-winning Producer working in Visual Effects and Post Production across television, film and advertising. Ewing’s work as a filmmaker is a response to large-scale production that can require upwards of hundreds to people to produce. In contrast, his filmmaking is a studio practice focused on working in isolation and one-on-one collaborations.

Ewing has been greatly informed by his music studies. His continued practice of listening to jazz consists of challenging himself to expand what he is listening to and how he listens. His decision-making, problem-solving and activism are all defined by how he thinks musically.
KATHERINE FINERTY

Katherine Finerty is currently Assistant Curator and Communications & Development Manager at The Showroom, London. She is also an independent curator and writer focusing on research-based and socially-engaged practices, translocal identity politics, and contemporary arts of the African diaspora. Finerty works collaboratively to develop alternative cultural discourses and multi-disciplinary art experiences that encourage progressive exchanges and participation. Her curatorial practice embraces sound as a powerful tool for storytelling and brings together artists, musicians, poets, DJs, and more to create collective interdisciplinary platforms.

In 2019 Finerty co-curated Collective Intimacy (180 The Strand and The Showroom, London) and The Showroom Mural Commission - Simnikiwe Buhlungu: Notes to Self (Intimate 1) (The Showroom) with Elvira Dyangani Ose. She has a Masters in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art, London; a BA in History of Art and Africana Studies from Cornell University, New York; and has studied History of Art at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.

Photo: Charlotte Speechley