The show took the 1959 program but modified and interwove it with new elements. Moran improvised while listening to Monk through headphones; later, the whole band donned headphones, playing Monk while hearing him. Moran took song snippets and sounds from an archival cache of Monk rehearsal tapes and looped them into the music.
Video showed the North Carolina hamlet where Monk was raised and where his forebears worked the fields as slaves. Incidents from Monk’s life, and Moran’s own musings, put the music in historical context but made it part of a completely modern art piece.
A critical success, “In My Mind’’ was made into a documentary but has been performed just a few times since its 2009 premiere. On Thursday the project comes to Jordan Hall with a twist: alongside Moran and his rhythm section, bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits, the balance of the band are Moran’s students at the New England Conservatory.
In the last two years, the hyper-achieving Moran has received a MacArthur “genius grant’’ and been named jazz adviser to the Kennedy Center in Washington, along with a full slate leading his own bands and playing with Charles Lloyd and others. But the Monk project feels special to him.
“Just spending an evening playing Monk’s music brings things back to the root,’’ Moran says. “And this is the first time we’re playing this music with - I shouldn’t call them students, but young musicians - so they get a taste of what it is to play Monk with a contemporary edge.’’
When Moran was first invited to take on the 1959 concert, the idea of simply re-creating it flashed through his mind for a second, and was instantly dismissed.
“I wanted to share more about what I felt about Monk, rather than just play his music,’’ he says. “Because I didn’t know if that was going to be enough for me; it wasn’t going to satisfy the therapy that I needed surrounding Monk.’’
