Alicia Hall Moran
Alicia Hall Moran, mezzo-soprano, is a multi-dimensional artist performing and composing between the genres of opera, theater, visual art, and jazz.
She is currently a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow developing performances for and about the ice, with wide-ranging collaborators including Lyric Opera of the North.
Moran composes and records music, but also writes about music—recently “Jessye Norman and Alban Berg” for Princeton University Press, and “RBG and the Opera” for Tidal Magazine.
In a steady artistic through line also embracing literature, dance, and contemporary music, Moran’s recent engagements included a four-hour solo vocalize for dances conceived by Lee Mingwei and Bill T. Jones at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, premieres of new arias by Tomeka Reid for Long Beach Opera, by Pulitzer prize-winning composer Tania León for Bellagio, Italy, and new art songs by composer James Moore. Moran can be heard as soloist in Gabriel Kahane’s oratorio emergency shelter intake form recorded with Oregon Symphony, and in recital with concert pianist Lara Downes, in a new collaboration with saxophonist Yosvany Terry, and in the evening-length concert works she directs and co-produces with her husband, Jason Moran (including the touring Two Wings: The Music of Black America in Migration that premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2019.
Before starring as Bess on the celebrated 20-city American tour (including DC’s National Theater), Moran made her Broadway debut in the Tony-winning revival The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, and subsequently performed Gershwin with orchestras nationwide, including National Symphony Orchestra.
Steadily rewriting a template for the classical singer, her own critically-acclaimed albums “Heavy Blue”, and “Here Today” and independent shows like the motown project, and Black Wall Street, highlight Moran's ingenuity.
Previous Artist Residencies and lectures include the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, MASSMoCA, National Sawdust, The Juilliard School, Yale University, New England Conservatory, University of Michigan, and National Portrait Gallery. Moran has been commissioned by ArtPublic/Miami Art Basel, Museum of Modern Art, The Kitchen, Histories Remixed/Art Institute Chicago among many others. Last season she was named the Inaugural Chamber Music Artist in Residence at the Frost School of Music, and was Creative Associate at The Juilliard School.
In partnership with husband and collaborator Jason Moran, she a Ford Foundation Art of Change fellowship recipient, and has generated work for the Venice Biennale, Whitney Biennial, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Symphony Center in Chicago, Studio Museum in Harlem, and Spoleto FestivalUSA, and Elb Philharmonie. Their next opus can be seen at Boston Institute for Contemporary Art 2022–2023.