If you stay still and listen to the various soundtracks playing in Jason Moran's new exhibition at Walker Art Center, you'll hear a moment that's like the perfectly harmonious vibing frenzy of an improvised jazz concert.
It happened for me while watching Glenn Ligon's "The Death of Tom" (2008), abstracted and blurry black-and-white film footage that reflects on America's history of racism. It is set to the 1905 song "Nobody," the signature theme of Bert Williams, vaudeville blackface performer and Broadway's first black star, as performed by Moran.
This is just one of many films screening in Moran's refreshingly interdisciplinary solo show, which proves that no artist is confined to one medium — if they don't want to be, that is.
Better known as a jazz pianist, Moran has released eight albums with his trio the Bandwagon, scored the film "Selma," and worked on more than 30 albums as a sideman. Contemporary art entered the picture in 2005, when the Walker and two other arts institutions invited him to create music through residencies. That experience, and the resulting album "Artist in Residence," began his foray into the art world, and other jazz musicians have followed his lead.
Now here we are, with Moran's first museum show at the Walker. As part of the live-ness of this exhibition, he will perform two multimedia concerts May 18 and 19 with the Bandwagon (bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits), DJ Ashland Mines and visual artists Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin. Moran is calling it "The Last Jazz Fest." When I asked why, he simply said: "It's time."
Everything about this project is surprising, from the setup to the work to the live performances. It begins with a dimly lit main room. Visitors will feel they're walking into a warehouse-space jazz club at 1 a.m., an hour when the night is over for some and just beginning for others.
It contains three sculptures by Moran, part of his "Staged" series paying homage to historic New York jazz venues. An arched ceiling, covered in cloth with yellow-and-maroon circular designs and lit from below, represents Harlem's Savoy Ballroom, a mecca for big band and swing in the 1920s and '30s. The cramped, cream-colored padded walls of the Three Deuces contain an upright bass, drums and a piano to suggest the basement club in Midtown where bebop hit its stride in the '40s. And sawdust covers the floor of Slugs' Saloon, where an old jukebox awaits visitors to the jazz joint of the '60s and '70s, way out East in Alphabet City, where free jazz reigned and trumpeter Lee Morgan was famously shot (yes, there is a Netflix film about it).
Between these sets, Moran screens a loop of video collaborations with artists Lorna Simpson, Theaster Gates, Kara Walker, Adam Pendleton, Carrie Mae Weems, Julie Mehretu, Alicia Hall Moran (his wife and collaborator) and the Bandwagon. Separate smaller rooms show the Ligon film and Stan Douglas' "Luanda-Kinshasa" (2013), a fictional recording cast of 10 musicians set in a reconstruction of CBS' 30th Street Studio.
