Marcus Roberts Trio-
Marcus Roberts, Jason Marsalis and Rodney Jordan
September 23 @ 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
Ticket Price Range: $35-$50
Doors: 6:30pm • Show: 7:30pm
In 2014, Marcus Roberts was honored to have his life and work featured on a segment of the celebrated CBS News television show 60 Minutes. The show, entitled “The Virtuoso,” traced Roberts’ life to date from his early roots in Jacksonville and at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind to his remarkable career as a modern jazz musician. Roberts is perhaps best known for the development of an entirely new approach to jazz trio performance....
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Marcus Roberts Trio-
Marcus Roberts, Jason Marsalis and Rodney Jordan
September 23 @ 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
Ticket Price Range: $35-$50
Doors: 6:30pm • Show: 7:30pm
In 2014, Marcus Roberts was honored to have his life and work featured on a segment of the celebrated CBS News television show 60 Minutes. The show, entitled “The Virtuoso,” traced Roberts’ life to date from his early roots in Jacksonville and at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind to his remarkable career as a modern jazz musician. Roberts is perhaps best known for the development of an entirely new approach to jazz trio performance.
Roberts grew up in Jacksonville, Florida where his mother’s gospel singing and the music of the local church left a lasting impact on his own musical style. After losing his sight at age five, he began teaching himself to play piano; he had his first formal lesson at age 12. Roberts later went on to study classical piano at Florida State University with Leonidas Lipovetsky. Among the many competitions that Roberts has won and awards that he has received over the years, the one that is most personally meaningful to him is the Helen Keller Award for Personal Achievement.
Roberts toured with Wynton Marsalis starting at age 21 for six years, when he left to tour and record with his own band. Roberts’ critically-acclaimed legacy of recorded music reflects his tremendous versatility as an artist; his recordings include solo piano, duets, and trio arrangements of jazz standards as well as original suites of music, large ensemble works, and symphony orchestra recordings (beginning with Portraits in Blue, Sony Classical, 1996). He premiered his ground-breaking arrangement of Gershwin’s Concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra with the New Japan Philharmonic and then recorded it with the Berlin Philharmonic (DVD: A Gershwin Night, EuroArts 2003). Roberts’ release of New Orleans Meets Harlem, Volume 1 in 2009 was the first on his new label, J-Master Records. Since then, he has released a very popular holiday recording, Celebrating Christmas, a nonet recording of an original suite, Deep in the Shed: A Blues Suite (Nov 2012), a collaborative CD of the Marcus Roberts Trio with Béla Fleck called Across the Imaginary Divide (Rounder Records), and in 2013, three critically acclaimed CDs—From Rags to Rhythm, Together Again: Live in Concert, and Together Again: In the Studio. In 2014, Roberts released another suite of all-original music, called Romance, Swing, and the Blues.
The Marcus Roberts Trio is known for its virtuosic style and entirely new approach to jazz trio performance. While most jazz trios have the piano front and center, all members of the Marcus Roberts Trio share equally in shaping the direction of the music by changing its tempo, mood, texture, or form at any time. And they do this with lightning quick musical reflexes and creative imaginations. The trio is known for having almost telepathic communication on the stage.
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