jazz musician; pianist
Personal Information
Born Marthaniel Roberts, on August 7, 1963, in Jacksonville, FL; son of a longshoreman and a gospel singer;
Education: Attended Florida State University.
Career
Toured Europe with high school jazz musicians, c. 1982; toured and recorded with Wynton Marsalis, 1985-91; recorded first album as leader, The Truth is Spoken Here, 1989; RCA/Novus recording artist, 1989-94; music director, Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, 1994; Sony/Columbia recording artist, 1994--.
Life's Work
Possibly no pianist in jazz today is doing more important work than Marcus Roberts. Generally associated with the neoclassical movement championed by his former mentor, trumpet player Wynton Marsalis, Roberts has emerged as a chief proponent in his own right of the trend toward recapturing the best elements of earlier jazz forms. While he has based the early phase of his career on a mastery of the music of such past giants as Thelonious Monk, Art Tatum, Duke Ellington, and George Gershwin, Roberts stands poised to help synthesize a new blend of music that uses earlier styles as a platform from which to launch jazz in previously unexplored directions.
Roberts was born on August 7, 1963 in Jacksonville, Florida. The younger of two brothers, Roberts went blind from cataracts at the age of four. His mother, a gospel singer at a local church, had gone blind while in her teens. When Roberts was five years old, he began to play on the church organ. His parents noticed this interest in music, and three years later, to encourage their son's involvement, they bought a piano. Roberts began teaching himself to play, spending hours on end at the keyboard. Within a year, he was good enough to give his first public performance, a recital at the church.
Roberts began taking formal piano lessons at the age of 12 while attending a state school for the blind and deaf in St. Augustine, Florida. After a year of classical piano training, Roberts suddenly was converted to jazz. Scanning radio stations idly one day, he came across a broadcast of music by the great Duke Ellington. "I said to myself then and there, 'That's the kind of music I want to learn how to play,'" Roberts was quoted as saying in a 1989 Esquire article. He began collecting all the jazz he could find over the next few years. One of his most important early influences was stride piano wizard Art Tatum. The first time Roberts heard a recording of Tatum, he recounted in Time, his response was "Does he have three hands?"
After graduating from high school, Roberts enrolled at Florida State University in Tallahassee, where he began studying piano with Leonidus Lipovetsky. While on a European tour with some high school jazz musicians, Roberts met trumpet player and composer Wynton Marsalis, who was performing at the Montreux Jazz Festival. The following year, Roberts encountered Marsalis's father, pianist Ellis Marsalis, at the 1982 convention of the International Association of Jazz Educators. Through the senior Marsalis, Roberts renewed his acquaintance with Wynton, and the two musicians developed an ongoing dialog about the history and future of jazz.
Meanwhile, Roberts continued to hone his skills at Florida State. He entered and won a handful of piano competitions, including Jacksonville's Great American Competition in 1982. In 1985, during his senior year of college, Roberts was invited to join Marsalis's band for touring and recording, replacing keyboardist Kenny Kirkland. By this time, Roberts had already taken it upon himself to learn the entire Marsalis repertoire, and he eagerly accepted the offer. During his tenure with the Marsalis group, Roberts performed at clubs and festivals throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. He contributed to several albums, including J Mood, Marsalis Standard Time, Vol. 1, and Live at Blues Alley. He also found time to undertake an intensive study of the music of Thelonious Monk during this period. The result of this project was a first place finish in the first Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition in Washington, D.C. in 1987. His renditions of the Monk classics "'Round Midnight" and "Blue Boulevard Blues" earned him a victory over 21 other contestants, and $10,000 in prize money.
Roberts toured and recorded with Marsalis from 1985 to 1991. It was toward the end of this span that he launched his solo recording career. His first album, The Truth is Spoken Here, was released in 1989. His supporting band on the album included both Wynton Marsalis and his brother, trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis. By jazz standards, the album sold extremely well, especially for a first effort. It quickly rose to the top of the Billboard jazz chart. Roberts released his next album, Deep in the Shed, the following year. Like its predecessor, it was a top seller among jazz recordings. Both albums revealed a developing style that was both cerebral--a bit too cerebral for some critics--and soulful. Comparisons to Monk, whose material was included on both projects, were common. Philip Booth, writing for Down Beat in 1990, observed that "if chops, swing, maturity, inspiration, and compositional skills are the qualifications, Roberts has arrived, or at the minimum has established himself as one young jazz pianist with much to offer."
Roberts maintained his streak with a third straight number one jazz album, Alone With Three Giants, released in 1991. This album, which made Roberts the first artist ever to see his first three projects top the jazz charts, was a solo piano album featuring the works of three of the most celebrated composers in the history of jazz: Monk, Duke Ellington, and Jelly Roll Morton. Later that year, Roberts put out Prayer for Peace, a solo Christmas album. Continuing to record at a feverish pace, he released the album As Serenity Approaches, a collection of solos and duets including pieces by Ellington, Morton, Fats Waller, Cole Porter, and others, in 1992. Roberts's next effort was the 1993 release, If I Could Be With You, which included several original compositions in addition to works by Ellington, Monk, and other standards. It also featured six challenging stride piano pieces by stride pioneer James P. Johnson. Roberts's performance on this album moved People magazine to laud "his ability to make his own brimming compositions sound as if they have always existed, and always will."
The key philosophical approach that Roberts shares with Marsalis, and which his work with Marsalis helped to solidify, is a thorough respect for jazz tradition. "To me, it has to begin with the blues and swing for me to deal with it," Roberts was quoted as saying in a 1993 Orlando Sentinel interview. "I think Duke Ellington felt the same way; I think Monk felt the same way, Coltrane--all kinds of other folks. Beethoven felt that way, Haydn, Mozart--you're dealing with the essential component of something sacred." As his recording career continued to gather steam, Roberts's live performances became major events as well. On August 7, 1993--which happened to be his 30th birthday--Roberts premiered his 70-minute commissioned composition "Romance, Swing, and the Blues" as part of the Classical Jazz Series at Lincoln Center in New York. The New York Post described the piece as "a rich, life-filled, and quite absorbing extended work." During the winter of 1994, Roberts served as music director for the 19-member Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra during its nationwide tour of the United States.
After recording his first six albums on the Novus label, Roberts jumped over to Columbia in 1994 to record Gershwin for Lovers, a collection of standards, recorded as a trio, by composer George Gershwin. The album reached number one on the jazz charts, selling more than 70,000 copies, spectacular numbers for a jazz recording. His involvement in all things Gershwinian led to a performance with the American Symphony Orchestra of "'I Got Rhythm' Variations," a new interpretation of the Gershwin classic. In 1996 Roberts released two albums simultaneously. Portraits in Blue, essentially a follow up to Gershwin for Lovers, featured new takes on another batch of Gershwin tunes, in particular a radical transformation of "Rhapsody In Blue." Columbia marketed this recording as a classical album, putting Roberts in a special category of crossover artists exemplified by former associate Wynton Marsalis. Roberts's other 1996 product, Time and Circumstance, was an album of original compositions for jazz trio. Critics lauded the maturity of his writing and playing as well as Roberts' grasp of jazz idioms. Wrote Peter Watrous of the New York Times, "Marcus Roberts's idiosyncratic, two-handed style sums up the possibilities of jazz in an age of nearly unlimited information."
With the release of Blues for a New Millennium in 1997, Roberts cemented his reputation as a leading figure in neoclassical jazz, second in stature only to Marsalis. Even his harshest critics were so pleasantly shocked by Blues. While his previous efforts had left no doubt about his technical virtuosity, his mastery of various jazz idioms of the past, or even his own talent as a composer paying tribute to those traditions, questions remained regarding his ability to forge that body of expertise into music that was truly groundbreaking. Writing in Emerge, Gene Seymour noted that Blues was the album that finally erased his reservations about Roberts's brilliance. "Damned if this wasn't the kind of music that burned on contact," he remarked. "... he seems to have finally taken everything he's learned from his masters and merged it with his own somewhat startling intensity of feeling." As audiences prepare for a new millennium of listening, they will certainly be expecting further fireworks, rooted in the best of what jazz has to offer, from Marcus Roberts.
Awards
Great American Piano Competition, Jacksonville, FL, first prize, 1982; Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition, first prize, 1987.
Works
Selective Discography
- The Truth is Spoken Here, Novus, 1989.
- Deep in the Shed, Novus, 1990.
- Alone With Three Giants, Novus, 1991.
- Prayer for Peace, Novus, 1991.
- As Serenity Approaches, Novus, 1992.
- If I Could Be With You, Novus, 1993.
- Gershwin for Lovers, Columbia, 1994.
- Time and Circumstance, Columbia, 1996.
- Portraits in Blue, Sony Classical, 1996.
- Blues for a New Millennium, Columbia, 1997.
- With Wynton Marsalis J Mood, Columbia, 1987.
- Marsalis Standard Time, Vol. 1, Columbia, 1987.
- Live at Blues Alley, Columbia, 1988.
- Intimacy Calling, Standard Time, Vol. 2, Columbia.
- The Resolution of Romance, Standard Time, Vol. 3, Columbia.
- Blue Interlude, Columbia.
Further Reading
Sources
- American Visions, April-May 1994, p. 46.
- Billboard, May 25, 1996, p. 1.
- Christian Science Monitor, March 31, 1992, p. 11.
- Down Beat, April 1990, p. 20; July 1996, p. 19.January 1998, p. 52.
- Emerge, May 1998, p. 69.
- Esquire, September 1989, p. 153.
- National Review, September 2, 1996, p. 96.
- New York Times, May 14, 1995, p. 28.
- Orlando Sentinel, July 13, 1993.
- Time, July 17, 1989, p. 85; June 17, 1996, p. 91.
— Robert R. Jacobson
