their return to the United States, making his first recorded appearance on Osby's 1997 Blue Note album Further Ado. He would subsequently appear on several other Osby albums, and Osby would introduce him to avant-garde pianists Muhal Richard Abrams and Andrew Hill. His stint with Osby led Moran to sign a contract of his own with Blue Note. His debut Soundtrack to Human Motion was released in 1998. Moran was joined on the album by Osby, drummer Eric Harland (a classmate of Moran's at the Manhattan School, and the one who recommended him to Osby), vibraphonist Stefon Harris and acoustic bassist Lonnie Plaxico. 2000s Moran's next album, 2000's Facing Left (after a work by Egon Schiele), featured a trio that formed out of Osby's group, New Directions: Moran, bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits. Compositions were some of Moran's and some by Mateen, Duke Ellington, Björk and Byard. The trio, which came to be known as The Bandwagon, was joined by saxophonist and pianist Sam Rivers for their next album, Black Stars, which appeared in 2001. Black Stars was included in NPR's "The 50 Most Important Recordings of the Decade." In 2002, Moran released a solo album, Modernistic, and followed it in 2003 with a live trio album, recorded at New York's Village Vanguard, called The Bandwagon. That same summer he appeared in the Montreal International Jazz Festival, first partnering with Lee Konitz, and then with the trio. In 2004 he played on Don Byron's Ivey-Divey. The Ivey-Divey Trio (sometimes a quartet) toured for a number of years, from the Monterey Jazz Festival 2004 to Montreal's Jazz Festival in 2006 to WinterJazzFest in 2009. Moran's 2005 album Same Mother, an exploration of the blues, brought guitarist Marvin Sewell into the Bandwagon mix. Moran's 2006 release, Artist in Residence, included a number of selections from different works commissioned by museums, all of which premiered in 2005: "Milestone" is centered on a visual work by Adrian Piper from the Walker Art Center; "The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things" was incorporated into a preexisting installation of that name by artist Joan Jonas; and "RAIN", inspired by ring shouts from African American slaves, is a recording of The Bandwagon with guests Marvin Sewell, Ralph Alessi and Abdou Mboup. Critical reception to Artist in Residence has been arguably colder that to his other releases. Moran's IN MY MIND, premiered in 2007, is