Marcus Roberts: Finding Himself in the Past : Jazz: The musician, who visits UCI today, has made it his goal to preserve the pianists’ tradition.
The generation of jazz musicians that has come up in the last several years, typified by trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, is known to be brash, talented and obsessively dedicated to the jazz tradition. But few are as serious as Marcus Roberts.
The 30-year-old pianist--who worked in Marsalis’ band during the late ‘80s--not only has made it his goal to preserve the tradition of his instrument and the spirit of the great jazz piano masters. He further hopes to extend that tradition and spirit into new territory.
“The piano is a misunderstood instrument, underrated in its role in the growth of jazz evolution,” Roberts said on the phone from Boulder, Colo., a recent stop on a tour that finds him combining solo recitals with master classes on college campuses (he’s at UC Irvine today). “People think of the piano as a supporting instrument and worse--if it’s solo, as kind of a cocktail-lounge instrument. The instrument’s full range of power isn’t known.”
Those who have heard Roberts in concert, or on his solo recording “Alone With Three Giants,” know well the power of which he speaks. “Three Giants,” recorded in 1990, is a program of music by composer-pianists Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington. Roberts’ current release, “If I Could Be With You,” continues with selections from stride pianist James P. Johnson and more Monk and Ellington.
Some critics have harped on Roberts for relying too much on the past and not creating his own direction. But “when I play Jelly Roll Morton, to me, that is Marcus Roberts,” he responded. “If you believe in it and then execute it, then it is you. It’s real hard for me to understand how people can say that my version of the ‘Maple Leaf Rag’ is like every other. Even if you did play the same notes--and I don’t--your personality, all your experience, make the song yours.”
To follow this argument, one first must accept that jazz is a classical form of music, worth preserving and interpreting. “Without musicians like me,” Roberts said, “a lot of people would never hear Jelly Roll because Jelly Roll is dead. We have to conceive that the men and women like him were great, incredible musicians, and that if somebody doesn’t play their music it will be lost. If you didn’t have symphony orchestras playing Mozart or Beethoven, their music would not be heard. The same is true in jazz.”
So why, does he feel, is there so much criticism of musicians like himself who have looked to the past for direction? “A lot of it is grounded in an ignorance of what determines individuality in any kind of music, the personality that comes out in the rendering of rhythm or the notes you’ve got, the feelings of passion and belief that can be heard,” Roberts answered.
“We go out and buy different recordings of a Rachmaninoff piano concerto by Horowitz or Rubinstein for their different interpretations. And this is in a music that doesn’t reharmonize the melodies like we do in jazz. The same thing is legitimate in jazz.” When he speaks to students, Roberts said, he emphasizes that the music they favor now--be it rap, rock or alternative--owes its existence to jazz. “They may not care about it now. But as you move into adult life and the music that is popular now is replaced by the next generation’s music, which will also owe its existence to jazz, it will be important to have that knowledge, to have that grounding.”
Roberts, who first began playing piano at age 8 in the family church and who first heard Duke Ellington at 12, says his jazz education came haphazardly. “There was no real direction to tell me what I should be listening to”--until he met Marsalis at the 1981 Montreux Jazz Festival.
“That was the turning point as far as coming closer to the music. He was the first person of my generation to have a philosophy about it. I always loved the music. But running into him helped crystallize the things I was feeling and gave me a foundation on which to build.”
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Roberts’ stint with Marsalis (he’s heard on the “J Mood,” “Marsalis Standard Time” and “The Majesty of the Blues” recordings) was fruitful for both musicians. “Most of the important things that occur in a culture,” Robert said, “come from groups, people helping each other along a path and supporting each other, whether it be musicians or painters or literary circles. And that’s what was going on with us.”
Though he no longer plays in Marsalis’ band, Roberts still is associated with his old boss via the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. Roberts is the orchestra’s artistic director of jazz--a perfect job for someone like him, looking for a way to educate listeners in the history of his chosen music.
“We’re going to be playing the entire history of jazz as a living statement,” Roberts said. “We won’t be presenting the music as museum pieces. As far as we’re concerned everything is modern, whether its Jelly Roll or Miles Davis. There’s no reason a tune of Jelly Roll Morton’s written in 1905 can’t be played in a modern way in 1993. So the program will have a very clear historical sensibility, but reoriented and structured into a very modern experience.”
His solo performance tonight at the Irvine Barclay will reflect those goals. “I’ll present a history of the instrument along with some original music. It won’t be strictly chronological; I might start with a current tune and then jump around. But I want to show all the piano’s possibilities, while providing some entertainment.”
* Marcus Roberts plays tonight at 8 at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4255 Campus Drive, Irvine. $20. (714) 854-4607.