Alicia Hall Moran

• Excursion to the Big Apple Circus: Trip with students to the Big Apple Circus featuring a talk on theatricality with the ringmaster and performers from the circus   

• JuilliART Conversation with Xaviera Simmons: A virtual conversation with JuilliART artist Xaviera Simmons focused on the process of creation and expression across forms 

• Interdisciplinary Intensive with Students from the Music and Drama Divisions: Five students from across divisions explored solo performance practice in response to a conversation between Hall Moran and JuilliART artist Xaviera Simmons surrounding Xaviera’s work Sundown (Number Nineteen)

• Cultural Equity and Performance Practice Class Visit: A co-led class session for students in the Cultural Equity and Performance Practice class with faculty member Curtis Stewart

Mezzo-soprano and composer Alicia Hall Moran conjures a sonic world wherein classical and African American cultures join. Moran made her Broadway debut in the Tony-winning revival of The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess before starring as Bess in the 20-city American tour. Her second album, Here Today, was released in 2017; her first, Heavy Blue, was released in 2015. She recently recorded Gabriel Kahane’s oratorio emergency shelter intake form with Oregon Symphony and for pianist Lara Downes’ Holes In The Sky. She has toured Bryce Dessner’s Triptych worldwide.

Moran is a 2019 Jerome Hill Artist fellow, a Ford Foundation Art For Change fellow, and a Creative Associate at Juilliard.  She’s authored productions including Black Wall Street (2016), inspired by the Wall Street career of her father, a native Oklahoman, and the Tulsa race riot of 1921 (River to River Festival, Opera Southwest, SITE Santa Fe, Tulsa Performing Arts Center, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture/NYPL, and National Sawdust); and Breaking Ice (National Sawdust, MASS MoCA, and PROTOTYPE/Out of Bounds).

Moran has been commissioned by MoMA, the Kitchen, Art Public/Art Basel Miami, Histories Remixed/Art Institute Chicago, Poetry Society of America, and Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Collaborators include Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, guitarist Bill Frisell, the band Harriet Tubman, guitarist Thomas Flippin, taiko artist Kaoru Watanabe, poets Carl Hancock Rux and Jessica Care Moore, and visual artists Carrie Mae Weems, Ragnar Kjartansson, Suzanne Bocanegra, Simone Leigh, Liz Magic Laser, Adam Pendleton, and Whitfield Lovell. Moran and her husband, Jason Moran—both Ford Foundation Art of Change fellows—have jointly created works for Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Symphony Center in Chicago, Elbphilharmonie, Venice Biennale, Whitney Biennial, Walker Art Center, and Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Moran earned a bachelor’s degree in music from Barnard College (with a minor in anthropology), and a bachelor’s degree in vocal performance from the Manhattan School of Music.