ABOUT JASON MORAN Called “the most provocative thinker in current jazz” by Rolling Stone, pianist, composer, and artist Jason Moran was named a MacArthur Fellow and Down Beat Magazine’s “Jazz Artist of the Year” in 2010. He is the longtime curator for Park Avenue Armory’s Artists Studio, as well as former Artistic Director for Jazz at The Kennedy Center. Moran currently teaches at the New England Conservatory. Jason Moran’s activity stretches beyond the 15 critically acclaimed solo recordings and performances with masters of the form including Charles Lloyd, Cassandra Wilson, and the late Sam Rivers. His 21-year relationship with his trio, The Bandwagon—with Nasheet Waits and 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. Moran keeps a close relationship with music and activism, culminating in his scoring work with film director Ava DuVernay on Selma and 13th. He also created and played the score
of the Apollo Theater’s staged version and HBO’s adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Award-winning book Between the World and Me. Within jazz, his multimedia tributes to Thelonious Monk, Fats Waller, and James Reese Europe have shifted the jazz paradigm combining striking visuals, music, and history into evening-length works. Moran has also collaborated with such artists as Adrian Piper, Joan Jonas, Glenn Ligon, Stan Douglas, Adam Pendleton, Lorna Simpson, and Kara Walker. Commissioning institutions of Moran’s work include the Walker Art Center, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Dia Art Foundation, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Harlem Stage, and Jazz at Lincoln Center. In 2018, Moran had his first solo museum exhibition at the Walker Art Center, which traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.
PRODUCTION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Nicholas Houfek Lighting Supervisor Steinway & Sons
NEXT IN THE SERIES JOY GUIDRY FEBRUARY 20 & 21
Joy Guidry is a celebrated artist in the experimental and avant-garde music spaces, representing a convergence of sound, spirit, and radical self-expression. This multifaceted artist comes to the Veterans Room to create a ruminative performance in the spirit of a southern church revival and based on her ambient album Five Prayers, reimagining it into movements based on different themes of Black American spirituality and artistic expression ranging from jazz and minimalism to opera, ballet, blues, and gospel.
JAMIRE WILLIAMS MARCH 25 & 26
Multidisciplinary artist Jamire Williams gives an immersive and experimental solo percussion performance that pushes the boundaries of rhythm, texture, and memory through a dynamic interplay of acoustic instruments, vintage samplers, and analog tape machines. Using a wide array of percussion instruments, found objects, and prepared surfaces, this layered sonic environment blurs the lines between past and present, human and machine, and live and recorded to offer the audience an enveloping, time-bending listening experience for spiritual inquiry and sonic excavation.
2026 ARTISTS STUDIO
IN THE RESTORED VETERANS ROOM
JASON MORAN
A DECADE OF ARTISTS STUDIO thursday, january 8, 2026 at 7:30pm saturday, january 10, 2026 at 8:00pm
SEASON SPONSOR
PUBLIC SUPPORT
Bloomberg Philanthropies is Park Avenue Armory’s 2026 Season Sponsor. Leadership support for the Armory’s artistic programming has been generously provided by the Anita K. Hersh Philanthropic Fund, Charina Endowment Fund, Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust, Pinkerton Foundation, the Starr Foundation, the Thompson Family Foundation, and Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels. Major support was also provided by the the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Foundation, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Marc Haas Foundation, the Emily Davie and Joseph S. Kornfeld Foundation, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The Shubert Foundation, the SHS Foundation, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, and Wescustogo Foundation. Additional support has been provided by the Armory’s Artistic Council. Public support is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature as well as the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council under the leadership of Speaker Adrienne Adams. Cover image by James Ewing.
ABOUT PARK AVENUE ARMORY Part palace, part industrial shed, Park Avenue Armory supports unconventional works in the performing and visual arts that cannot be fully realized in a traditional proscenium theater, concert hall, or white wall gallery. With its soaring 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall—reminiscent of 19th-century European train stations—and an array of exuberant period rooms, the Armory provides a platform for artists to push the boundaries of their practice, collaborate across disciplines, and create new work in dialogue with the historic building. Across its grand and intimate spaces, the Armory enables a diverse range of artists to create, students to explore, and audiences to experience epic, adventurous, relevant work that cannot be done elsewhere in New York. The Armory both commissions and presents performances and installations in the grand Drill Hall and offers more intimate programming through its acclaimed Recital Series, which showcases musical talent from across the globe within the salon setting of the Board of Officers Room; its Artists Studio series curated by Jason Moran in the restored Veterans Room; Making Space at the Armory, a public programming series that brings together a discipline-spanning group of artists and cultural thought-leaders around the important issues of our time; and the Malkin Lecture
Series that features presentations by scholars and writers on topics related to the Armory and its history. In addition, the Armory also has a year-round Artists-in-Residence program, providing space and support for artists to create new work and expand their practices. The Armory’s creativity-based arts education programs provide access to the arts to thousands of students from underserved New York City public schools, engaging them with the institution’s artistic programming and outside-the-box creative processes. Through its education initiatives, the Armory provides access to all Drill Hall performances, workshops taught by Master Teaching Artists, and in-depth residencies that support the schools’ curriculum. Youth Corps, the Armory’s year-round paid internship program, begins in high school and continues into the critical post-high school years, providing interns with mentored employment, job training, and skill development, as well as a network of peers and mentors to support their individual college and career goals. The Armory is undergoing a multi-phase renovation and restoration of its historic building led by architects Herzog & de Meuron, with Platt Byard Dovell White as Executive Architects.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS Chairman Emeritus Elihu Rose, PhD Co-Chairs Adam R. Flatto Amanda J.T. Riegel President Rebecca Robertson Vice Presidents David Fox Pablo Legorreta Emanuel Stern
Marina Abramović Abigail Baratta Joyce F. Brown Cora Cahan Hélène Comfort Paul Cronson Tina R. Davis Jessie Ding Sanford B. Ehrenkranz Roberta Garza Kim Greenberg Samhita Jayanti Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Edward G. Klein, Brigadier General NYNG (Ret.) Ralph Lemon Jason Moran Janet C. Ross Stephanie Sharp Joan Steinberg Dabie Tsai Ying Zhou
Avant-Garde Chair Adrienne Katz Directors Emeriti Harrison M. Bains Angela E. Thompson* Wade F.B. Thompson* Founding Chairman, 2000-2009 Pierre Audi* Anita K. Hersh Artistic Director
*In memoriam Treasurer Emanuel Stern
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Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue at 67th Street
ABOUT THE VETERANS ROOM “In a sense, the Veterans Room, of all the Armory’s opulent reception rooms, has the deepest spiritual kinship with a work of contemporary art.” —The New York Times The Veterans Room is among the most significant surviving interiors of the American Aesthetic Movement, and the most significant remaining intact interior in the world by Louis C. Tiffany and Co., Associated Artists. The newly formed collective led by Tiffany included some of the most significant American designers of the 19th century at early stages of their very distinguished careers: Stanford White, Samuel Colman, and Candace Wheeler among them. The design of the room by these artists was exotic, eclectic, and full of experimentation, as noted by Decorator and Furnisher in 1885 that “the prepondering styles appear to be the Greek, Moresque, and Celtic, with a dash of Egyptian, the Persian, and the Japanese in the appropriate places.” A monument of late 19th-century decorative arts, the Veterans Room is the fourth period room at the Armory completed (out of 18). The revitalization of the room responds to the original exuberant vision for the room’s design, bringing into dialogue some of the most talented designers of the 19th and 21st centuries – Associated Artists with Herzog & de Meuron, Platt Byrd Dovell
White Architects, and a team of world-renowned artisans and experts in Tiffany glass, fine woodworking, and decorative arts. The revitalization of the Veterans Room follows Herzog & de Meuron’s design approach for the Armory building, which seeks to highlight the distinct qualities and existing character of each individual room while interweaving contemporary elements to improve its function. Even more so than in other rooms at the Armory, Herzog & de Meuron’s approach to the Veterans Room is to amplify the beauty of the room’s original vision through adding contemporary reconstructions of lost historic materials and subtle additions with the same ethos and creative passion as the original artisans to infuse a modern energy into a harmonious, holistic design. The room’s restoration is part of an ongoing $215-million transformation, which is guided by the understanding that the Armory’s rich history and the patina of time are essential to its character, with a design process for the period rooms that emphasizes close collaboration between architect and artisan.
The restoration and renovation of the Veterans Room was made possible by The Thopson Family Foundation, Inc., Susan and Elihu Rose, Charina Endowment Fund, Lisa and Sanford B. Ehrenkranz, Almudena and Pablo Legorreta, Assemblymember Dan Quart and the New York State Assembly, Emanuel Stern, Adam R. Flatto, Olivia Tournay Flatto, Kenneth S. Kuchin, R. Mark and Wendy Adams, American Express, Rebecca Robertson and Byron Knief, Amy and Jeffrey Silverman, the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Fund of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Anonymous (2).
armoryonpark.org | @ParkAveArmory
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