How A Jazz Musician Is Redefining Culture At At The Kennedy Center

Not so long ago, Moran’s eclectic, adventurous approach to jazz would have placed him well outside the aesthetic boundaries of Washington’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts . But in the past few years, the big white box on the Potomac has opened its venues to jazz in tandem with skateboarders, stand-up comics, dancers, painters and rappers. This redefining of what it means to be the “national cultural center” is, to a large extent, the doing of Jason Moran.