The thirty-year-old pianist Jason Moran has cleverly played himself into the spotlight in a short time. Since 1999, after having performed in saxophonist Greg Osby’s band for years, this talented musician has already made six solo albums. The CD Modernistic, which shows the pianist’s talent for expression in an extraordinary way, is the most striking album of his oeuvre so far. But also his latest album, Same Mother, with a leading part for the blues, made quite an impression. Jazz and blues have ‘the same mother’ according to Moran. Black musicians played both styles to express themselves in a direct way. Moran uses the recognizable blues patterns as a starting point and subsequently wildly varies and interprets. Beauty is opposite to rough, unpolished forms. A soulful blues lick can suddenly be the start of a pleasantly wild chaos, in which everyone knows exactly what he is supposed to do, without losing each other.
