Marcus Roberts

About

Portraits in Blue (SK 68488), Roberts' critically acclaimed debut recording for Sony Classical, explores and reinterprets the jazz elements in the concert music of American composers George Gershwin and James P.

Johnson. The focal point of Portraits in Blue, Gershwin's signature classic Rhapsody in Blue, has been recorded many times, but Roberts' recording is the first in which the piece has been so thoroughly re-conceived through the personalised interpretations of a particular artist. The album also includes Roberts' distinctive reworkings of Gershwin's Variations on I Got Rhythm and Johnson's rarely heard Yamekraw, named for a historic black settlement on the outskirts of Savannah, Georgia. Roberts' arrangements of these classics match his highly individual piano style with the sweep and grandeur of an orchestra combining thirteen members of New York's Orchestra of St. Luke's and eighteen accomplished jazz musicians, many of them alumni of Roberts' touring jazz ensembles.

Roberts' most recent Sony Classical recording, The Joy of Joplin (SK 60554), released in October 1998, brings a similar approach to the popular music of another uniquely American composer, Scott Joplin. This new collection features Roberts' interpretations of eight classic Joplin pieces as well as eight original pieces of his own that blend Joplin's ragtime style with European classical music and the sounds of 20th-century blues and swing. His influences range from ragtime to Ravel and Debussy, Erroll Garner and Ron Carter.

"Classical music has always had a huge impact on jazz musicians," Roberts says, noting that his personal listening mix includes Beethoven, Chopin, Mahler, Coltrane and Billie Holiday. "The basic goal of the Rhapsody in Blue project is to showcase the art of improvisation from the jazz musician's perspective within a semiclassical form."

Marcus Roberts began his professional career performing with jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. He had already recorded six albums before signing with Columbia early in 1994. During this time, he enjoyed the distinction of being the first jazz musician to have his first three recordings reach number one on Billboard's traditional jazz chart. He has recorded a wealth of original solo and band material, with a continuing commitment to exploring the American solo piano tradition with his versions of classics by Ellington, Monk, Jelly Roll Morton and James P.

Johnson.

Marthaniel Roberts was born in Jacksonville, Florida, on August 7, 1963.

Blind since the age of five, Roberts was first exposed to music in the local church, where his mother was a gospel singer. His parents bought a piano when he was eight, and he began nine years of formal training at age twelve. While a music major at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Roberts studied with Leonidus Lipovetsky, who, along with Van Cliburn, was a student of the noted Russian piano teacher Rosina Lhevinne. Roberts also cites such diverse pianists as Art Tatum, Vladimir Ashkenazy, James P.

Johnson and Mary Lou Williams as early influences.

Aspiring to a career in jazz, Roberts won several state-wide competitions and even earned plaudits from Florida's governor. In 1982 he won the competition at the annual convention of the National Association of Jazz Educators in Chicago, where he met pianist Ellis Marsalis, patriarch of the noted jazz dynasty. Wynton Marsalis heard Roberts play at the convention, and the trumpeter asked his father to have Roberts contact him.

Marsalis went on to have a profound influence on Roberts' artistic development, as he took the young pianist under his wing. By 1985 their relationship had evolved to the point where Marsalis invited Roberts to take over the piano chair in his quartet vacated by Kenny Kirkland.

Roberts was surprised by the opportunity, but so was Marsalis, because by the time the pianist had joined the ensemble, he had learned its entire repertoire from tapes the trumpeter had sent him. Roberts maintained a busy touring schedule with Marsalis from 1985 to 1991 and appeared on virtually all the trumpeter's jazz recordings made during that period. He continued to garner awards, including the $10,000 first prize at the first Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition in 1987.

In addition, Roberts' work on behalf of the Jazz at Lincoln Center program has been most impressive. One of the highlights of the summer 1993 Classical Jazz Series at Lincoln Center was the debut of Roberts' remarkably ambitious seventy-minute Romance, Swing and the Blues, described by the New York Post as "...a rich, life-filled and quite absorbing extended work." Its triumphant performance occurred on August 7, the pianist's thirtieth birthday, and it marked the beginning of a very promising new decade for Roberts. A vast knowledge of the jazz canon served the artist well during his tenure as music director for the nineteen-member Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra's coast-to-coast U.S. tour in the winter of 1994. Roberts selected the nightly programs and served as emcee for the mostly sold-out thirty-city tour. Throughout 1994 he devoted much of his time to the work of Gershwin, including a spectacular performance as a soloist with Leon Botstein's American Symphony Orchestra in Variations on I Got Rhythm at an Avery Fisher Hall concert titled Common Ground: Jazz, African-American and Jewish Composers (1930-1955).

Roberts is active as an educator, conducting seminars and clinics throughout the United States. Roberts also has a special interest in working with the blind and has recently contributed his time to projects with The Lighthouse and the American Foundation for the Blind, two nationally recognised organisations for people with impaired vision.

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