Giddins and DeVeaux on Jason Moran

"His 2002 album Modernistic is a benchmark achievement and a profound illustration of his capacity to combine classicism and maverick innovation. Whereas many pianists would be content simply to master James P. Johnson's 1930 'You've Got to Be Modernistic,' Moran suggests its essential character while giving it a radical facelift, taking it through so many variations that by the end you suspect that you've been on a completely different trip from the one intended by Johnson. … 'You've Got to Be Modernistic' is basically a ragtime work, made up of three sixteen-bar strains. Moran works with the original material, but adds his own variations (including new C and D strains) and frequently alters or stops the tempo. Johnson's modernism was apparent in his introduction and the first two strains (A and B), which are ornamented by augmented chords and the whole-tone scale. Although Moran is basically faithful to Johnson's primary theme, he adds incremental dissonances and extends its final melodic figure. Here and in the subsequent strains, Moran halts the flow at will, as if to look around and tweak this chord or twist that rhythm" (Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeaux, Jazz, pp. 612-3).