LINCOLN CENTER

Jazz at Lincoln Center
Marcus Roberts: Piano Masters of Melody

Marcus Roberts (born August 7, 1963, in Jacksonville, Florida) is an American jazz pianist. He achieved success as a stride pianist who celebrates classic standards and jazz traditions. Roberts has also distinguished his solos by accompanying himself with walking baselines. Interpreting Thelonious Monk, he adds creative dissonances to Monk's compositions.

Blind since youth due to glaucoma and cataracts, Roberts attended the Florida School of the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine, Florida, alma mater of another distinguished musician, Ray Charle. Roberts began playing piano at an early age and then studied the instrument with pianist Leonidas Lipovetsky while attending Florida State University. In 1985, he got a break when famed trumpeter Wynton Marsalis chose him as his new sideman. Roberts became a close friend and disciple of Marsalis, and collaborated with him on many projects during the ensuing years.

With Marsalis' support, and soon after joining him, Roberts began releasing his own records. His albums tend to be homages to past jazz greats. On a piece such as Nebuchadnezzar, Roberts uses traditional harmonies and chords, then builds an expansive tonal and melodic structure. He is renowned as an interpreter of Monk, Ellington, Morton and Gershwin, among others. He provided the soundtrack to the 1999 film Guinevere .

An instrument of multitudinous function, the piano has played an integral role in the development of jazz since the days of ragtime and remained a central component in the evolution of the music. The prodigious Marcus Roberts has a long history of treasuring the tenets of jazz through his work, which for the last quarter century, has epitomized preservation through innovation. Since his Jazz at Lincoln Center debut in 1987, his presence has been deeply significant, and his recorded and commissioned works have honored some of his most revered predecessors of the piano. For this occasion, Roberts will focus on four influential melody maestros possessing an original style that greatly influenced his approach to melodic composition: Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver, and Chick Corea. Joining Roberts will be The Modern Jazz Generation, featuring Rodney Jordan, bass; Jason Marsalis, drums; Alphonso Horne and Tim Blackmon, trumpets; Ron Westray, trombone; Corey Wilcox, trombone and tuba; Ricardo Pascale, saxophone; Tissa Khosla, baritone and tenor saxophones; Stephen Riley, tenor saxophone; and Joe Goldberg, clarinet.