Roberts Plays the Old, Shows Path to the New

Here’s the problem facing jazz and concert music as the 20th century rolls to an end: How do you preserve the music’s repertory--the long, accumulated assemblage of creative effort--while simultaneously encouraging and furthering the development of new works?

In the case of jazz, the dilemma is further exacerbated by the fact that the music is both written and improvised, and that the existing repertory has emerged in a bewildering array of rhythmic frameworks.

Pianist Marcus Roberts, a thoughtful, historically insightful artist with solid jazz credentials, has made the problem one of his central artistic concerns. Saturday, in a solo program properly titled “Evolution of Blues and Swing” at the Veterans Wadsworth Theater, he offered a broad display of his solutions to the problems of preservation. And, interestingly enough, in doing so, he also provided a few hints about how to incorporate that preservation into the furtherance of new music.

Roberts’ program included music by Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, as well as a sprinkling of classic American standards by Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart and others. (Curiously, his continuing fascination with George Gershwin only resulted in one number--”How Long Has This Been Going On?”--although Roberts is reportedly working on his own rendering of “Porgy and Bess” for the Gershwin centennial).

His interpretations of the Joplin, Morton and Johnson works were particularly illuminating. In each case--and especially so in Morton’s “New Orleans Blues,” Joplin’s “A Real Slow Drag” and Johnson’s “Keep Off the Grass”--Roberts re-imagined the pieces, adding subtle shades of soft-to-loud dynamics, allowing the works’ inherent rhythmic qualities to emerge as colorful undercurrents.

The pop standards were treated somewhat differently. Cole Porter’s “All of You,” for example, became a miniature cameo, not unlike a classical etude or impromptu, filled with shifting textures of tone and rhythm. If, in some of the standards, the approach verged toward what might be described as “light classical,” Roberts’ intention, his desire to view these pieces from his own perspective, nonetheless made the effort worthwhile.

And what became clear by the conclusion of this fascinating program was that Roberts’ solution to the problem of dealing with repertory opens up a creative window on both the past and future. By retaining the substance of these works, without mimicking their styles, by finding within them new musical challenges for the present and the future, rather than a by-the-numbers need for precise historical reproduction, he is identifying the entire jazz repertory as a timeless arena for creative endeavor.