Alicia Hall Moran Named Inaugural Chamber Music Artist-In-Residence

The Frost School of Music at the University of Miami is pleased to announce the appointment of multi-dimensional artist Alicia Hall Moran as its inaugural Chamber Music Artist-in-Residence.
Alicia Hall Moran Named Inaugural Chamber Music Artist-In-Residence
The announcement was made by Valerie Coleman, world-renowned Director of the Frost School’s Chamber Music Program, who stated over the course of the 2020-2021 school season  Ms. Moran will work with ensembles throughout the many departments at Frost under her auspices.
 
“Ms. Moran is an exemplar of how artists invent and reimagine ideas, connect, and design ingenious performance experiences,” commented Professor Coleman.   “She brings to our students a wealth of information critical to artistry, comportment, and career sustainability while guiding our chamber ensembles towards the vision of building an outstanding career.”
 
Dean Shelton G Berg adds, “Opera singer Alicia Hall Moran portrayed Bess in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess on Broadway and on national tour. Her husband, Jason Moran, is Artistic Director for Jazz at the Kennedy Center. Alicia has a very special way of connecting with audiences and understanding the underpinnings of that connection.”
 
“I am completely humbled by this historic moment in higher education, globally, and I could not be prouder to bear firsthand witness to the ingenuity and courage the Frost School of Music is modeling,”  stated Alicia Hall Moran.  “The students I’ve already encountered are quite frankly effervescent in their approach to our sessions together.  They are open and engaged, and that points to their mutual respect for the moment.  I am so thrilled to be a part of this spectacular machine!” 
 
More about Alicia Hall Moran
Alicia Hall Moran, mezzo-soprano, is a multi-dimensional artist performing and composing between the genres of Opera, Art, Theater, and Jazz.  She is currently a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow developing Breaking Ice: performances for and about the ice, with wide-ranging collaborators from Ice Theatre of New York, shinobue and taiko player Kaoru Watanabe (Silk Road, Kodo), and poet Jessica Care Moore, to opera’s Prototype Festival/Beth Morrison Projects, National Sawdust, and the contemporary museum MassMoCA featuring musicians Brandon Ross, JT Lewis, Maria Grand, and Melvin Gibbs.  
 
Moran composes and records music with a wide array of musical ensembles, but also writes about music in published essays—notably Jessye Norman and Alban Berg for Princeton University Press, and RBG and the Opera for Tidal Magazine.  In a steady artistic throughline also embracing dance, Ms. Moran’s most recent engagements included a 4-hour solo vocalize for dances conceived by Lee Mingwei and Bill T. Jones at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the premieres of new works by jazz cellist Tomeka Reid for Long Beach Opera, and the preeminent composer Tania León for Bellagio, Italy.  As a mezzo-soprano, Ms. Moran can also be seen as a soloist in Gabriel Kahane’s oratorio emergency shelter intake form originally recorded with Oregon Symphony, and in recital with concert pianist Lara Downes.
 
Before starring as Bess on the celebrated 20-city American tour, Ms. Moran made her Broadway debut in the Tony-winning revival The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, which lead to her subsequently performing Gershwin with orchestras nationwide, including Frost Wind Ensemble.
 
Steadily rewriting a template for the classical singer, her own critically-acclaimed albums HEAVY BLUE, and HERE TODAY and shows like The Motown project (next appearing at the famed Joe’s Pub in NYC and streaming online in January 2021) or Black Wall Street, which will be directed by Kaneza Schaal in 2021, highlight Ms. Moran’s ingenuity and joy in working with diverse musicians.  
 
Previous artist residencies and lectures include the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, MASSMoCA, National Sawdust, Yale University, New England Conservatory, and National Portrait Gallery.  Ms. Moran has been commissioned by ArtPublic/Miami Art Basel, Museum of Modern Art, The Kitchen, Histories Remixed/Art Institute Chicago among many others.
 
In partnership with husband and collaborator Jason Moran, she was awarded a 2017 Art of Change fellowship by the Ford Foundation and has generated large-scale performances for the Venice Biennale, Whitney Biennial, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall, Symphony Center in Chicago, and Elb Philharmonie in Hamburg, among many others.
 
Visit her online at aliciahallmoran.com