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

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

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

Of all these achievements, it was the Marsalis jeopardy that gave Roberts the chance to disentangle and showcase his prodigious technique and comprehensive knowledge of the jazz canon. His contributions to the clump can be checked out upon a number of outstanding recordings--J Mood; Standard Time, convolution 1; Live at Blues Alley; and action s in Southern Blue, volumes I end 3, all on Columbia Records.

"I learned more in the years I played with Wynton than anything other I did. He taught me for a like reason much about improvisation and the real meaning of being a jazz musician. I probably learned more in the first pair of weeks [with Wynton] than the whole time I was in college" says Roberts, who gripe [i]or[/i] grips 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 sum of two units or three years before his first band broke up" he says. "I remember during individual conversation I told him in what manner depressed I was, just being down in Florida without a whole fate of people to play with and in what way difficult it was to learn in what manner to play." So, when Kirkland split, Marsalis asked Roberts to take the piano stool.

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

Roberts' next to the first 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 fresh ground, featuring Roberts' solo performances in tribute to the music of Jelly make revolve 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 impels from gospel ("In a Southern Sense" written by dint of Roberts, and "Just a Closer Walk With Thee") to ragtime ("Maple Leaf Rag"), boogie-woogie ("Country Blues") swing, and late jazz. The focus of the recording, however, is the music of the great stride pianist James P Johnson

Characterized through a constant switching between the sinewy bass notes of the left hand and the weaker chords of the right, stride is a mode of expression of piano playing that emerg from the great Harlem "ticklers" of the 1920 men of that kind as Johnson, Duke Ellington, Willie "The Lion" Smith, Luckey Roberts, and the young Fats Waller. Stride "is certainly the greatest in quantity comprehensive and most difficult solo piano diction to play because it's actual physical. You're moving your left hand a destiny in order to create that |boom resound boom, boom, boom, boom,'" says Roberts, demonstrating the rhythm

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

Roberts' performances of the compositions of stride piano's masters retain the inner man of the style and era without sounding like simple re-creations. Rather than repeating his mentors, he expands upon 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 beneficial as he did. So you would rather use that as a building block up for your own agenda and your hold philosophy as an artist."

The first pace of Roberts' approach to the music is "to regurgitate it," he explains. "You have to imitate it in the way that that you know what it was. The nearest thing you have to do is determine what is the philosophy that flock the production of that particular piece. That's mixed thing, because you have to figure without the different touches on the piano that were used to create this frame of mind or this sound. And then, finally, we have the spiritual stage of interaction with the manner of writing which is personalization."