John Moran

John Moran is an American composer, choreographer, and theater artist.

He has been called an "operatic trailblazer", and his works are variously described as "unconventional", "innovative", and difficult to categorize.

His works bring together a variety of mediums, including recorded music, spoken word, choreography and dance, mime, lip syncing, and video.

Additionally, his works have featured a range of performers, including actors Uma Thurman and Julia Stiles, as well as singer Iggy Pop, and poet Allen Ginsberg.

John Moran was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1965.

He lacks a formal education in composition and in fact never graduated from high school.

He unsuccessfully attempted to study informally at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where his father was the assistant dean of arts and sciences.

But he knew he was drawn to composition and given his experience singing children's parts in operas.

When the Philip Glass Ensemble was performing in town, Moran called all the Lincoln-area hotels until he found out where Glass was staying.

According to Glass, "this skinny kid came up and gave me a tape, like all the skinny kids with tapes do, and, believe it or not, I listen to them, at least in a haphazard way. And I was struck right away. This was a born theater creator, even at that age, which was about 20".

He moved to New York City in 1988 at age 23, where he befriended and became the protege of the composer Philip Glass.

He debuted his first opera the same year, in 1988.

Moran's first opera, Jack Benny!, was created in 1988, and composed entirely of snippets of sound from The Jack Benny Program television series.

The piece was staged at New York's La Mama Experimental Theater Club, where it was presented by performance troupe Ridge Theater, and received strong praise in publications such as The New York Times.

Although the work was considered a benchmark for modern composition at the time, the work itself was reportedly stolen in a Lower East Side apartment robbery, and has not been presented again.

There are many unusual anecdotes about Moran's life at this time, including his living "behind the couch" of Philip Glass for several years, after showing up on the older composer's doorstep and announcing himself Glass's protégé.

In 1990, Moran was commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts to create his second opera, The Manson Family: An Opera.

A recording of the opera, which starred Iggy Pop, was produced by Glass and released on POINT Music/Philips/PolyGram Records.

This was around the time that the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was under congressional scrutiny for its funding of seemingly "obscene" art such as Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ", and Moran and The Manson Family: An Opera were also caught in the crossfires of the controversy.

Although the recording was almost immediately recalled by its parent label for obscene language and content (receiving one of the country's first Parental Advisory stickers).

This is the only recording by Moran to present, which has ever received public release.

In another unusual anecdote concerning Moran's early career, Charles Manson was thought to have taken it upon himself to send a letter to Wall Street Journal critic Mark Swed who published a negative review of the opera.

In 1993, Moran's trilogy opera Every Day Newt Burman (The Trilogy of Cyclic Existence) debuted at the larger Annex space at La MaMa in New York City to wide critical acclaim.

Owing to the opera, Moran was awarded a Bessie Award.

Moran also received a 1995 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.

In 1995 and 1996 his opera Matthew in The School of Life premiered at The Kitchen in New York City.

The work featured vocals by poet Allen Ginsberg and a small part voiced by actress Julia Stiles.

As a performer, The New York Times compared Moran with figures like Merce Cunningham and Twyla Tharp, and as a composer he received an Obie Award.

In these later early works by Moran, one can find him expanding into work with theatrical illusions and detailed specifications regarding the works staging.

The use of doubled performers, playing the same part were often employed in his scoring of these events, to mimic the effect of cinematic-style editing.

Glass himself confirmed such stories in several interviews (The Boston Globe, 1997 and The New York Times, 2000).

At the end of this period, in 1997, his version of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari premiered at American Repertory Theater at Harvard.

Concerning Caligari, The Boston Globe described Moran as "a modern day Mozart", but Moran himself expressed an unhappiness with the production, as well as the work's producer Robert Brustein and its presenting partners Ridge Theater, which apparently resulted in a tense and public split with the group.

In a 1998 New York Times article the following year, Moran claimed to have seen his staging and visual ideas appropriated by the group, while being publicly uncredited to him by the group's director Bob McGrath.

The article itself, perhaps attempting to speak in McGrath's defense, mistakenly attributed several of Moran's theatrical techniques to McGrath (perhaps unknowingly).

The article presented other points of view on the subject from the New York theater world of the time, but clearly marked an end to a decade of joint production by the two parties.

In 2000, Moran's opera Book of The Dead (2nd Avenue) was commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and produced by George Wolfe for The New York Shakespeare Festival / Public Theater, in New York City and featured actress Uma Thurman as the work's narrator.

The work received less than favorable reviews, however, and in later autobiographical works Moran himself described the production as "one of the most unhappy times of [his] life", owing to "the sheer mechanical hugeness of it all".

The work (also designed by Moran) received The American Theater Wing Design Award (now called The Hewes Award) for "Best Theatrical Design in New York City (2000)".

He relocated to Germany and re-mounted his work Everyday, Newt Burman in 2001 at Staatstheater Darmstadt, where he apparently met German dancer Eva Müller who starred in the remounted production.