Marcus Roberts: Loose Yet in Control

The concert by the Marcus Roberts Trio at the CSUN Performing Arts Center on Sunday evening had some echoes of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Roberts, like the late pianist John Lewis--longtime music director of the MJQ--seems to prefer a precisely controlled musical environment. And his interaction with bassist Roland Guerin and drummer Jason Marsalis possessed the same sort of synchronous musical qualities that were a fundamental MJQ attribute.

There were other similarities, as well--the most notable being Roberts’ fascination with musical history, although, in his case, it is the history of American jazz rather than the classical forms that Lewis found so compelling.

All those qualities were especially present in the first half of the program, when the trio offered ragtime tunes (Scott Joplin’s “A Real Slow Drag” and “The Entertainer,” a Jelly Roll Morton number (“Jungle Blues”), King Oliver’s “West End Blues” and several songs associated with Louis Armstrong (including “Mack the Knife” and “What a Wonderful World”).

In the ragtime pieces, Roberts, ignoring Joplin’s dictum that there should be no improvising in his compositions, dipped into thoughtful embellishments and enhancements without sacrificing the essential qualities of the originals.

In the Armstrong numbers, his lines flowed with the sort of effervescent enthusiasm Satchmo brought. Marsalis’ meticulous drumming and Guerin’s blues-driven bass lines added the perfect counterpoint, stylistically in sync with Roberts’ efforts to illuminate the different musical genres.

The second half of the bill was less convincing.

Consisting of a single, lengthy Roberts original suite titled “From Rags to Rhythm,” its 12 movements, performed without a break, lacked sufficient compositional content to sustain interest, despite superb individual and collective improvising by all members of the trio.