Caleb Wheeler Curtis & Jason Moran: "Incantation" Album Release Celebration
About This Event
Caleb Wheeler Curtis and pianist-composer Jason Moran present an album release celebration for Incantation at National Sawdust. Curtis brings an ensemble-focused, risk-taking approach that privileges collective motion and quick textural shifts, while Moran contributes a practice that moves between jazz and contemporary classical languages and staged, multimedia work; the lineup emphasizes improvisation, listening and structural inquiry over fixed arrangements.
About Incantation
At National Sawdust, “Incantation” refers not to the recent Taiwanese horror film, but to a classical album-release performance led by saxophonist Caleb Wheeler Curtis with pianist-composer Jason Moran. The program moves as an ensemble study, with abrupt shifts in texture and group momentum, and Moran’s language threading between composed structure and improvisational logic. No specific NYC premiere history is established for this work, but its placement in Brooklyn’s new-music ecosystem matters. The piece treats “incantation” as a method: repetition and restraint used to test what collective sound can summon.
About the Artists
Caleb Wheeler Curtis
Caleb Wheeler Curtis is a New York City–based jazz artist whose work sits in the overlap of free jazz and experimental improvisation. At Bar Bayeux, he leads small-group sets that prioritize collective motion and quick shifts in texture, drawing on the presence of collaborators like Emmanuel Michael, Michael Sarin, Hery Paz, and Colson Jimenez.
Jason Moran
Jason Moran is an American pianist, composer, and educator whose work moves between jazz and contemporary classical language. In New York City he appears at venues such as Town Hall and Roulette, including Japan Society and The Town Hall’s Murakami Mixtape and Long Play Festival programs with Blank For.