Conversation with Tierney Malone & Jason Moran (Digital: Registration Required) The Sankofa Project Dialogues

Please join us on Monday, May 22 from 6 – 7 pm for a conversation with the curator of  The Sankofa project, Tierney Malone, and Jazz pianist, composer, and The Sankofa Project’s summer 2022 featured artist, Jason Moran.

Click here to Register and join!

The Sankofa Project Dialogues are presented in conjunction with commissioned artwork created for The Sankofa Project and displayed in Lawndale’s Main Street Windows. Each iteration of this program addresses an aspect of the United States’ historically censored or ignored narratives which reinforce the racial oppression of Black Americans. Hosted by The Sankofa Project’s curator, Tierney L. Malone, the dialogues explore the subject of each artwork with the artist and a prominent scholar.

This program is funded in part by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.

IMAGES BY RONALD L. JONES of Barline Hopkins Deathbed by Jason Moran.

Jazz pianist, composer, and artist Jason Moran was born in Houston, TX in 1975 and earned a degree from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with legendary pianist Jaki Byard. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2010 and is the Artistic Director for Jazz at The Kennedy Center. Moran currently teaches at the New England Conservatory.

Moran is deeply invested in reassessing and complicating the relationship between music and language, and his extensive efforts in composition, improvisation, and performance are all geared towards challenging the status quo. 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.

The scope of Moran’s collaborators is extensive. He has collaborated with major art world figures as Adrian Piper, Joan Jonas, Glenn Ligon, Adam Pendleton, Lorna Simpson, and Kara Walker.  His long-standing collaborative practice with his wife, mezzo-soprano and composer Alicia Hall Moran is groundbreaking; as named artists in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, they together constructed BLEED, a five-day series of performances stretching from readings to wellness to a ring shouts. In 2015, they participated in the Venice Biennial curated by the late Okwui Enwezor. His solo exhibition JASON MORAN  traveled from the Walker Art Center, Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, Wexner Center for the Arts and the Whitney Museum of American Art. An exhibition of work created in 2021 called  Bathing the Room with Blues will open at the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art. His work is in the collection of the Houston MFAH, Whitney Museum, MOMA, Walker Art Center, and Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Tierney L. Malone is a visual artist and modern day storyteller who uses the canon of African-American history and pop culture to create mixed media works that challenge contemporary culture and politics.

Malone has exhibited his art widely throughout Texas and the United States, including numerous solo exhibitions. His works are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Kansas City Jazz Museum, Kansas City, Missouri; Goldman Sachs, New York, New York; and the Federal Reserve Bank, Houston, Texas. He is the recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant, a CACHH Visual Artist Grant, and a Kimbrough Visual Artist Grant.

Collaboration with the jazz community is also at the forefront of Malone’s practice, including commissions to create the jacket covers for jazz musician Don Byron’s 1999 CD, Romance of the Unseen, on the Blue Note Label and for jazz pianist Randy Weston’s 2003 performance at the Miller Outdoor Theater. In 2008, Malone completed two jazz-related major commissions: a limited edition print celebrating Da Camera of Houston’s 20th Anniversary and an outdoor mural entitled “Southern Sounds” for the Coleman Art Center in York, Alabama. Additionally, Malone is the creator of the Jazz Church of Houston and the host of the Houston Jazz Spotlight on 90.1 KPFT, both of which recognize and preserve Houston’s remarkable contribution to the musical genre of Jazz.

Born in Los Angeles and based in Houston’s historic Third Ward, Malone was raised in Mississippi and Alabama and considers himself a Southern Seed.