Thursday & Friday, September 13 & 14, 2018

Jason Moran Fats Waller Dance Party is co-sponsored by StArt of Cool, Museum of Durham History, Duke Department of African & African American Studies, the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture, Center for Multicultural Affairs, and Duke Swing.

Jason Moran is one of modern music’s most vital forces. Through a series of ambitious projects meant to bring jazz to a wider audience — such as the 2007 Duke Performances commission In My Mind, which reimagined Thelonious Monk’s 1959 Town Hall performance — Moran has become one of the most sought-after pianists and bandleaders in jazz today. With frequent daring nods to funk, hip-hop, and contemporary composition, Moran has expanded jazz’s stylistic reach and given it new vitality. Now a label head and the artistic director for jazz at the Kennedy Center, Moran is the form’s “greatest young conceptualist,” as JazzTimes exclaimed.