Marcus Roberts: tradition with vision - newly appointed musical director of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, New York, New York

American Visions, April-May, 1994 by Douglas Turner

Blind since age 4, Marcus Roberts, one of the outstanding jazz pianists of this generation, was already playing piano in church and studying classical music when he was awakened to jazz at age 12. He was led to his true destiny when his piano teacher played a recording of the great Art Tatum for him. "I swear I thought it was three people playing," Roberts recalls with a laugh.

That was his start down a road that led through college, to a first-place prize at the 1987 Thelonious Munk International Jazz Competition, to a six-year stint with Wynton Marsalis' group and three albums that consecutively hit No. 1 on Billboard's jazz charts, and then on to his most recent triumph--being named the 1994 musical director of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra in New York City.

Of all these achievements, it was the Marsalis venture that gave Roberts the chance to develop and showcase his prodigious technique and comprehensive knowledge of the jazz canon. His contributions to the group can be checked out on a number of outstanding recordings--J Mood; Standard Time, volume 1; Live at Blues Alley; and Gestures in Southern Blue, volumes I through 3, all on Columbia Records.

"I learned more in the years I played with Wynton than anything else I did. He taught me so much about improvisation and the real meaning of being a jazz musician. ... I probably learned more in the first couple of weeks [with Wynton] than the whole time I was in college," says Roberts, who holds a music degree from Florida State University.

Roberts first teamed up with Marsalis in 1985, after Kenny Kirkland left the band. "I had been knowing Wynton maybe two or three years before his first band broke up," he says. "I remember during one conversation I told him how depressed I was, just being down in Florida without a whole lot of people to play with and how difficult it was to learn how to play." So, when Kirkland split, Marsalis asked Roberts to take the piano stool.

Roberts made the most of the opportunity and emerged with his own albums and his own compositions. The Truth Is Spoken Here (Novus, 1989), Roberts' first recording as a leader, was backed by Marsalis, tenor saxophonists Charlie Rouse and Todd Williams, bassist Reginald Beal, and master drummer Elvin Jones and was released to critical acclaim, climbing to the top of Billboard's jazz chart.

Roberts' second album, Deep in the Shed (Novus, 1990), continued his work with horns and consisted of his compositions exclusively. And it topped the charts. His third album, Alone With Three Giants (Novus, 1990), broke new ground, featuring Roberts' solo performances in tribute to the music of Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk. When it, too, soared to the top of Billboard's jazz chart, it marked the first time any artist's first three recordings had accomplished that feat. After Prayer for Peace (Novus, 1991) and As Serenity Approaches (Novus, 1992), Roberts released his fourth solo effort, If I Could Be With You (Novus, 1993). Highlighting the history of jazz, it moves from gospel ("In a Southern Sense," written by Roberts, and "Just a Closer Walk With Thee") to ragtime ("Maple Leaf Rag"), boogie-woogie ("Country Blues"), swing, and modern jazz. The focus of the recording, however, is the music of the great stride pianist James P. Johnson.

Characterized by a constant switching between the strong bass notes of the left hand and the weaker chords of the right, stride is a style of piano playing that emerged from the great Harlem "ticklers" of the 1920s, men such as Johnson, Duke Ellington, Willie "The Lion" Smith, Luckey Roberts, and the young Fats Waller. Stride "is certainly the most comprehensive and most difficult solo piano style to play because it's very physical. You're moving your left hand a lot in order to create that |boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,'" says Roberts, demonstrating the rhythm.

Although stride is no longer a popular style of piano playing, Roberts sees a better future on the horizon, particularly in the emerging focus of some younger musicians. "Eric Reed and Peter Martin are exploring it; there are several other young men who are starting to get into it," he says.

Roberts' performances of the compositions of stride piano's masters retain the soul of the style and era without sounding like mere re-creations. Rather than repeating his mentors, he expands on them. "Ultimately, you are not trying to play thepiece like James P. Johnson played it," he says, "because that was his achievement, and there's no way you're going to re-create that as good as he did. So you would rather use that as a building block for your own agenda and your own philosophy as an artist."

The first step of Roberts' approach to the music is "to regurgitate it," he explains. "You have to imitate it so that you know what it was. The next thing you have to do is determine what is the philosophy that drove the production of that particular piece. That's complex thing, because you have to figure out the different touches on the piano that were used to create this mood or this sound. And then, finally, we have the spiritual stage of interaction with the style, which is personalization."