Kelly Moran

Based in New York, Kelly Moran works as a classically trained composer and musician. Although she has written for a wide range of instruments and appeared with multiple avant-rock bands as well as experimental ensembles, her solo albums—merging prepared piano with ambient electronics—have drawn the widest notice. After the unexpected critical acclaim that greeted 2017’s Bloodroot, she issued the improvisation-driven Ultraviolet in 2018. For 2024’s Moves in the Field she shifted away from her earlier prepared-piano approach, instead writing pieces for a programmable, player-piano-style instrument able to execute feats beyond human capability.

Moran took up the piano in early childhood even though no one else in her family had a musical background. She completed studies in piano performance, sound engineering, and composition at the University of Michigan, then pursued graduate work at the University of California, Irvine, where her master’s thesis consisted of electro-acoustic chamber music created for modern dance. Beginning in 2010 she issued solo recordings, opening with Microcosms and continuing with 2011’s Movement, whose pieces were written for dance in collaboration with choreographers Julia Cost, Randall Smith, and Susie Thiel. The live album One on One appeared in 2012. Beyond her own projects she played bass with thrash-jazz drummer Weasel Walter in Cellular Chaos, synthesizer in Voice Coils, and piano in the Charlie Looker Ensemble.

After 2016’s Optimist, Telegraph Harp released Moran’s Bloodroot in 2017. Written, produced, and performed solely by Moran on prepared piano and electronics, the album attracted coverage from Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times, which listed it among the year’s best classical releases. Following its appearance she began touring with Oneohtrix Point Never and composed works for pianist Margaret Leng Tan as well as the percussion/piano quartet Yarn/Wire. Warp issued Ultraviolet in 2018, an album drawn from prepared-piano improvisations augmented by electronics. The following year Moran returned with WXAXRXP Sessions, a five-track EP containing live-in-studio versions of Ultraviolet material recorded for NTS radio. Moves in the Field, released by Warp in March 2024, adopted a less overtly experimental stance than her previous work, favoring primarily acoustic piano and reduced abstraction. Several pieces were realized with a Disklavier, allowing Moran to notate passages impossible for one performer; in concert she combined the instrument’s rapid-fire arpeggios with intricate chord voicings, opening a fresh phase of her ambient piano music.