In Conversation with Marcus Roberts – Jazz.com | Jazz Music – Jazz Artists – Jazz News

In conversation with marcus roberts

By Ted Panken

Jazz critics over the last two decades have usually ascribed to pianist Marcus Roberts the aesthetics of "conservative neo-traditionalism." But the truth of the matter is somewhat more complex.

A virtuoso instrumentalist and a walking history of 20th-century piano vocabulary, Roberts is concerned with sustaining a modern dialogue with the eternal verities and transmuting them into present-day argot. Abiding by the motto "fundamental but new," he takes the tropes of jazz and European traditions at face value, and grapples with them on their own terms, without clich.

"What I'm advocating is always to expand while using the whole history of the music all the time," Roberts said in 1999, articulating a theme that he more fully develops in this interview, conducted a decade hence. At that earlier stage in his career, Roberts had recently applied his nascent, individualistic conception of the piano trio to a suite of original music inspired by his muse, Duke Ellington [In Honor Of Duke], and a songbook homage to Nat Cole and Cole Porter [Cole After Midnight]. Those albums augmented a body of work that included an improvised solo suite on Scott Joplins corpus, and customized arrangements of Gershwins "Rhapsody in Blue" and James P. Johnsons "Yamacraw."

"Ellington was not somebody who was going, Oh, there's Bebop; let's throw away the big band and solo all night on 'Cherokee,'" said Roberts. "He was about using the logical elements of bebop that made sense inside of his ever-expanding conception. I don't consider myself to be a New Orleans pianist, or a stride pianist, or a bebop pianist or any of that. I study the whole history and try to develop globally that way."

Now a working unit for 14 years, Roberts and his trio (Roland Guerin, bass; Jason Marsalis, drums) deploy that approach on New Orleans Meets Harlem, Vol. 1 [J-Master Records], his first release since 2001. They address repertoire by Joplin, Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller, and Thelonious Monk, laying down a pan-American array of grooves, channeling the essence of the old masters without regurgitating a single one of their licks.

"Marcus Roberts was a whole other whole category of musician for me to play with," Wynton Marsalis told me a few years later, reflecting on the ways in which Robertswho in 1986 replaced the mercurial Kenny Kirkland in Marsalis bandhelped trigger a sea change in the way Marsalis viewed his own musical production. "I had never encountered a musician around my age with that level of intelligence and depth of feeling about the music. He gave me a lot of strength. He made me understand you cant make it by yourself. You have to play with people, and his music is about getting together with other people. Marcus made me understand that if a person has a belief, that is their artistry. What Marcus Roberts told me then (and we were both very young men) is the truth: Your artistry is your integrity and who you are as a man. Who you are as a person. What you are about. Whats inside of you. Thats the most important componentnot whether you can hear chords quicker than somebody or play a more complex polyrhythm. I learned that from him, and from watching him and his development."

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Is New Orleans Meets Harlem, Vol. 1 a recording that youve been trying to find the right time to release over the last few years, or is it very recently recorded?

Well, Ill tell you what. I first recorded it in 2004. I edited it and mixed it and mastered it, and ultimately it just wasnt quite what I wanted it to be, so I re-recorded it in 2006, and now Im putting it out. Its really the second version. I re-did the whole thing. If Im going to put it out, in my estimation, I need to be happy with it if Im going to expect anybody else to be happy buying it.

What dissatisfied you about the first incarnation?

I cant even put my finger on it. I just didnt feel that it captured where we had evolved to. By the time Id fixed it and edited it and did all the post-production, we were playinghonestlyso differently that it didnt feel to me as though we had captured that in the first iteration. The other issue was that the last recording of mine on a major record label, Cole After Midnight, came out in 2001, but it was actually recorded in 1998. In other words, the last anybody heard of my work really dates back 11 years.

What are some of the reasons for that gap? Its not like you disappeared and hid in a cave. Youve been performing a lot.

Its been a few things. For one, after leaving Columbia I knew that I didnt want to sign with another major record label. So I was no longer interested in going in that direction, but at the same time, a lot of possibilities now available on the internet had not matured yet. A lot of changes were still in process, and I wanted to wait and allow us to use these different methods, strategies, and approaches to disseminate our work to the public.

The other reason was that, as happy as I was with my group, we needed to do some work to fill in some conceptual holes that I thought were there, and I didnt want to record anything until I felt those things had been resolved.

The third reason is pianistic. I needed to look at some major things to overhaul my technique, which you really have to do every five or ten years. You need to constantly examine what youre doing, what you think about your general approach to sound, what new technical principles youre interested in exploring that might require real time. So I felt I needed to take some time and invest myself in the piano to prepare for the next big stage of my career.

Those were the main reasons, off the top of my head, why its been so long. One final one is that I took a job, a half-time position at Florida State University, my old school, to teach jazz and help them with my jazz program. Ive been teaching young people my whole life, since I was a kid. I always liked doing it. You learn a lot when you teach, because you really have to think about what they need, what their talents and gifts are, and find a way to develop them using their skills and abilities, not just your perspective. Its hard work if you want to be good at it, and it took a long time. Im in my fifth year at FSU, and finally I feel Im making a real contribution to the program.

Let me follow up on points two and three. You said the trio needed to bolster some things conceptually and you needed to overhaul your technique. What specific technical and conceptual things were you looking to do?

I was developing a real interest in exploring more deeply how classical music and jazz could be presented together. That meant I needed to invest more time. Conceptually, I was and am interested in exploring a much more refined approach to sound, which meant that I needed to pick up some old repertoire and really investigate it. Bach, for example, which is the foundation of any keyboard technique. I wanted to go back to Bach for my concept of contrapuntal playing, viewing the piano as an instrument that is primarily interested in more than one line at a time, which is one of the big gifts that the piano offers. Another issue is to be able to play these lines with a certain amount of balance and clarity and articulationso Bach is perfect.

Another issue has to do with balance, being able to work on voicing and pedaling so that you can increase or expand the amount of nuance that you are capable of playing on the piano at any given time. I tried to focus on making sure that, if Im playing something soft . . .well, where is the threshold when I feel Im starting to gain control of that nuance, of these soft colors?

You can play a lot of different things when you study classical piano. The literature is clearly laid out, so if you know which things to study, you can cover a lot of territory. For example, if youve been trying to work on articulation and more of a light, clear touch on the instrument, youll play Mozart for that. If you want to deal with color and sonority, well, you cant get any better than Debussy and Ravel. If you want somebody who is in a direct line from Bach and Mozart, but a more romantic, sensual attitude, then Chopin is challenging, because you have to be able to play things very light and beautiful, but also play certain passages with tremendous power and virtuosity.

Its hard to do consequential research and development when youre on the road a lot, too, isnt it?

Well, it is a difficult thing to do when youre on the road. Its difficult to do when youre in the middle of presenting music that youve been playing for a while. New information reinvigorates you. Inspiration, in my opinion, is the key to a good imagination. Without inspiration, you just start playing the same old stuff, and your playing becomes, in my opinion, annoying and predictableand I just dont ever want to go there. Ill stop first. There is no point putting on the stage something that you dont care enough about to work on. Thats just for me. Whether we want to call it 'new' or 'old' or 'innovative' or whatever else, if youre not investing in it every day of your life, then youre not as serious about art as some great artists have been. Thats all I can say.

Back to point two, what did the trio need to accomplish?

I have to say that theyre so talented. Jason Marsalis is capable ... You might sit down with him and be playing just a regular B-flat blues, and say, 'You know what? Were going to modulate to A-minor, and when we modulate to A-minor I want you to keep the same form but play it in 7/4 time.' He has perfect pitch, so when you modulate he knows youre there, plus he can keep track of those two time signatures at the same time. No hesitation. Roland has a different kind of natural ability to use syncopation and grooves on the bass in this more folk type of stylefunk music, zydeco, Louisiana playingand also has a love of Ron Carters role in the Miles Davis Quintet, and a real deep connection with Jimmy Garrison from Coltranes group. Hes figured out a way to put all of that stuff together. The two of them playing together get this sophisticated, more abstract view of groove and time and rhythm.

What I wanted to achieve with them was showcase that talentwrite arrangements that would make it easier for them to exploit nuance. Thats one component that the public can address and digest comfortably. In the same way that when you go to a very sophisticated restaurant, you may not know the 20 ingredients in this chicken dish, but you know that it tastes good, and you know that there are some subtle reasons why. So I wanted to pay attention to these nuances and go in the direction of some of the other great trios that existed. The Oscar Peterson Trio was fantastic. Their execution was flawless. They had such a huge dynamic range. When Ray Brown would start to take a bass solo, it was a bass reflection of OPs virtuosic piano sound and style. Or Ahmad Jamal, who right now, today, can sit down at a piano and blow you away by himself, with a trio, with his conception, with his accompaniment ...

Frankly, we live in a loud culture, so everybodys view of a jazz trio is kind of, 'Oh yeah, cocktail music,' or 'its kind of cute, its kind of nice ....' Now, if we want the American people, or any other group, to take a jazz trio seriously, we have to work hard to present a group that has the same power, virtuosity, and delicacy that we can find in a quartet, or quintet, or septet.

The second way to do it is by flipping around the roles of the piano and bass and drums. My modern view is that if we make room for the bass and the drum, theyll be able to have equal access in bringing us where were getting ready to go. If Roland wants to change the form or the tempo, how do we set up a cue system so we actually can do that without the piano having to set it up? We had to figure out how to do it, and that changed the way we play.

Youve been evolving that concept for some time, havent you? You were talking about this ten years ago.

We talked about it ten years ago as a conception. It became a philosophy when we really started to be able to do it. Thats the difference. The conception is always something that we can talk about, but the question is whether youre going to really push and figure it out, or whether its going to be mainly conception.

Looking at the repertoire and the concept of the recording, I cant help but be reminded of the recording Alone With Three Giants, from twenty years ago, on which you interpreted repertoire by three of the composersMorton, Ellington, and Monkwhom you represent on New Orleans Meets Harlem. Lets talk about the arc of the repertoire. It seems to represent a fairly chronological timeline from the turn of the century to modernity, beginning with Jelly Roll Morton and Scott Joplin, and concluding with tunes by Monk and your own original piece.

When youre putting any record together, youre trying to sequence it in a way that shows contrast and the naturalness of the set, so that when people listen they dont get tired in the process. Ive even listened back to some of my own records and thought it was a little too intense the whole time. Just general observations.

So you want an ebb-and-flow?

Yes. You want people to have time to digest what theyre hearing. So we start the thing with Jelly Roll; hes at the beginning anyway, so why not? 'New Orleans Blues' I thought was a good selection to start it off. Also, we kind of used that blues by Jelly Roll to be a sort of microcosm of jazz, because the way we do it, we are able naturally to cover a broad range. From my vantage point, the 21st century in jazz music has to be about presenting or being informed by the entire history of jazz at all times, not restricting oneself to a particular ten-year period. Which may have been how the music was built, brick-by-brick. But at this time in history, we live in a collaborative community, a world community, a global community. Where technology is right now, everything moves at the speed of light, and jazz music is the one music that can keep up with it. It has everything in it. It has virtuosity. It has folk music. It has stuff from the inner city. It has grandeur and sophistication and aristocracy in it. It has democracy in it. It has perhaps even tyranny in it, depending on who the bandleader is. Everything is there.

Most of the pieces on this CD Ive been playing for years. Theres not really a whole lot of new material. What is new about it is that its all trio, and the concepts are organic, because Ive been playing this stuff for a long time, and Ive figured out how to rebuild from the ground-up to where it has a specific individual sound. To me, that was an important component.

So your Duke Ellington homage, In Honor of Duke, which was primarily comprised of original compositions, or Cole After Midnight, or Gershwin For Lovers, all trio recordings from the 90s ... how do you see those now?

I dont really see them in any particular way. A record just reflects where you are in your development. For example, Gershwin For Lovers was with Wyntons rhythm section, not my band. That was about slick arrangements, to give a good record to Columbia that I thought they could sell. In Honor of Duke represents the beginning of my original trio conception. When you come up with a concept that you believe is different or new, you often have to use original music to bring it to the forefront, because theres no music written for the conception yet. So I wrote that music, and also the previous record, Time and Circumstance, to represent the concept, if you will. But New Orleans Meets Harlem represents the philosophy. Its matured. Its grown-up. Its no longer really a concept. At this point its more a way of life. Its how we play, what we believe in.

At what point in your life did the notion of having the entire timeline of jazz interface in real time become part of the way you thought? Im sure it took a while to germinate, and once it began to germinate, it took you a while to find your way towards articulating it. Were you thinking this way before you met Wynton Marsalis?

I guess its always been there. Meeting Wynton was more confirmation than introduction. But the thing about Wynton is, hes the only one in my generation who could articulate intellectually and with any real clarity what we were doing and why we were doing it, and he was the only one who really knew how to execute and operationalize it. Again, a lot of people have great ideas, but they dont know how to make them operational. Youll get in the middle of it, then: 'Oh, I didnt consider it whole.' 'What do we do now?' 'I dont know.' So making ideas operational is important, and as I have developed, I have had to work very hard at sniffing out how to streamline some of my concepts, to bring together an operational structure with a conceptual structure.

Those are the real problems artists like to solve. For example, when you write a piano concerto, it needs to be playable. I mean, it might be difficult, but it shouldnt have you doing something thats physically going to hurt you. So if you play a great piano concerto, or a great piece by Chopin, whats amazing is how well it lies within the natural reach of the hand. Hes got all these problems with thirds and octaves and chromaticism and these kinds of elements, but he also has the solution right there. You just have to practice it!

As far as when I started to think in terms of the history Well, Ive always been in search of one general sound that I heard in church when I was 8 or 9 or 10 years old. I cant even explain what that sound is. From time to time, you hear and play things that have an eternal resonance. Youll play or hear a melody, and you dont know when it could have been written. It could have been ten thousand years ago. Somebody might have hummed that way in Africa someplace, or in Japan, or in Europe. Its timeless. Its beyond the scope of our understanding. Its like a subconscious/unconscious thing. Then, theres the conscious implementation of a design that you impose on it thats more 'modern,' new, relevant for our time, relevant for our generation, etcetera. But to me, you need both. Ive always thought in terms of integrationof more than one thing. That takes you into the realm of multiplication as opposed to addition. I mean, it becomes easy to play something 'new.' Ive never had any shortage of creativity or imagination. Im sure if you talked to Wynton for any length of time, he could say the same thing. Its never been a problem actually to find new things to do.

One thing you do that Wynton likes to discuss when he talks about you, which he says is new and is pretty distinct unto you, is your ability to play different time signatures with two hands.

That came as a result of playing with Jeff Watts. Its a different view of rhythmic syncopation. Monk was a master of syncopation; his music has syncopation built in on multi-levels. Theres the syncopation that occurs between any two notes that are a half-step apart. Thats my real view of bluesthe tension that is established harmonically between two chords that are a half-step apart, two notes that can be a half-step apart, between a rhythm that could occur on-beat and another rhythm that could occur on the end of one. Syncopation means were imposing something on it against the ear. The ears got into this, and then were going to change it this little bit. It could even be dynamic syncopationyour ear has gotten accustomed to something soft, and all of a sudden, BAM, heres something loud. It could be the syncopation of two instruments playing, and now, all of a sudden, weve got a third instrument. Its a real complicated thing.

When you get to rhythm, once you have the general understanding of where the quarter note pulse is, and a tempo that is carrying that pulse, then the only issue is to determine on how many levels can we interject this quarter note pulse. Tain was able to calculate and understand the real math behind these permutations. To be honest, I never really understood it the way he and Jason Marsalis do. Theyre on a whole different planet as far as understanding the rhythms you can play at these various tempos against other things. So that was a big part of Wyntons philosophy, and my philosophy with my group. I was interested in adding blues to that concept, so that always, whatever the tempo or concept, it has the real feeling of jazz. Thats that folk element Im talking about.

Like, when you hear Mahalia Jackson sing. That voiceshe could have been singing it a thousand years ago. It goes way beyond the generation youre in. As I said earlier, you want to get beyond reducing anything to a ten-year period, which is kind of what a 'generation' is. When you hear a Bach chorale, are you really thinking about 1720? No! Youre thinking that its moving you right now. 'Wow, this is beautiful. How did somebody write that?' If somebody could write a Bach chorale right now, trust me, nobody would be mad! Theyd say, 'Oh, Well, my-my. Somebody can do that again?' So weve got to be real careful in terms of how we evaluate critically the value of something based on the time period that it took place in. Thats a delicate issue.

New Orleans Meets Harlem begins in 1905, with 'New Orleans Blues,' and ends in 1956 with 'Ba-lue Bolivar Blues Are.' So youre spanning the first half of the twentieth century in American musicin Black American music. Do you have any remarks on the broader implications of this body of work?

Again, they solved problems. 'Ba-lue Bolivar Blues,' or any great blues that Monk wrote, has layers of syncopation that we can look at. Monks music to me always sounds like poetry or real modern folk music. Hes almost a modern equivalent of Jelly Roll Morton. Monks music is strictly jazz. Strictly. Youre not going to confuse it with German music, youre not going to confuse it with African music, youre not going to confuse it with anything. American jazz. Period. If somebody said, 'Give us four pieces of music that sound 100 percent like jazz,' well, youd pick a Jelly Roll Morton piece or a Louis Armstrong piece, youd probably pick a Monk piece, you might pick something from Kind of Blue. I wont speculate on the final thing. But for sure, you couldnt go wrong picking a Monk piece. You couldnt go wrong picking a Jelly Roll piece or a Louis Armstrong piece. You probably couldnt go wrong picking a Duke Ellington piece. Why? Because that music has such expansiveness.

Monk, Jelly Roll, Fats Waller, Joplin, and Ellington: all were serious about the piano and serious about exploring different forms, different types of nuance, which is what Im interested in. For me, its always a question of figuring out who has the information that I need to develop my artistry. Thats the selfish component. Now, Im not necessarily going back to Jelly Roll Morton to be caught up in recreating what he did. First of all, it would be very arrogant to pretend you could do that anyway. Because youre talking about somebodys lifes work, what they really went through. And again, these recordings are just a snapshot of part of a day of your life.

And Jelly Roll Morton had quite a life.

Man, quite a life. So I think the more relevant issue is what part of Jelly Roll Morton is also part of me and what I believe. So Im playing 'New Orleans Blues,' which is a staple piece that I always will play and always have played. 'Ba-Lue Bolivar Blues,' I dont know how many arrangements of that tune we havent thought up in this trio. Weve played it all kind of different ways. 'Honeysuckle Rose' is another one that weve played several different ways. The version on this record is not exactly the same version from 2004.

I think the importance of all the great composer-pianists, first of all, is that they reflect a range of understanding of the piano. Scott Joplin wrote down his music. He knew what he wanted people to play. Of course, he didnt really want folks improvising on it, but we do it anyway. But he was a serious scholar of the piano. His music, again, has this urban sound, but also this melancholya kind of aristocratic Folk sound. It also has this connection between pre-jazz and the classical music of Chopin. In other words, it has variety built into it. It has options built into it. Its an operating system, like Windows XP. You can put anything that you conceptualize inside of that. It doesnt impose the moves of what it can be, but it does say, 'Well, youd better write it in 32-bit code, or the operating system wont acknowledge it.' Theres the science of it, and theres the art of it, the creative element. Again, youre always balancing the design with the conception.

Who are some of your contemporary piano influences? By 'contemporary,' I mean roughly within your generation. Ten years ago, you mentioned to me Danilo Perez, and Ive heard people who know you mention Kenny Kirkland, whose chair you filled in Wyntons group. Are there other people within striking distance of your birthday who have influenced you?

Those probably would be the two. Kenny Kirkland, first of all, just his knowledge of rhythm, his knowledge of harmony, and how he could intersect the two using not just Latin influences, but also chordal structures taken from the music of Bartok and Hindemith. He was a modern thinker. A lot of stuff Kenny was playing was way more profound than the structure that he played in. He understood theory on an extremely high level. Hed play a chord that had a rhythmic function to hook up with Jeff Watts and a harmonic function to hook up with Wynton or Branford, whoever was soloing at the time. He also, frankly, was typically the most serious person on the stage. Kenny Kirkland was one of the most consistent pianists that you could hear. I mean, tune after tune after tune, he was swinging, playing an unbelievable modern vocabulary, a great sense of Herbie Hancocks and Chick Coreas conception, but again, put in this really modern but delightfully percussive mannerbecause it still has the theory and this European training behind it.

Danilo is someone who understood another cultures view of our music, and was able again to interface them very organically. He could sit down with you and explain how he did it. Again, its that concept of making something operational. Any programmer, before they start writing code for a computer program, first has to understand the function of the process. Once we know the manual procedure, then we can automate it. Danilo understood manually each of these styles, then he figured out where they intersected, and then he picked music to showcase what hed figured out. Its just brilliant stuff. Its well-executed pianistically. I personally hate sloppy piano playingsomebody who doesnt understand that the sustain pedal is there and what youre supposed to do with it. Hes a refined player. He understands the vocabulary of these Latin cultures, where he can get away with superimposing it, where he should leave it alone. Also, he inspires the musicians he plays with, which is another job of a pianist. You have to provide an inspirational environment for the bass player and the drummer to do their thing. You have to know when to lay low and stroll so that the piano doesnt get in the way of what somebody else is trying to play, even if its your conception, your philosophy and your group viewpoint. Its a hard job. Its not for the faint-hearted.

You were mentioning earlier that youve been looking your whole life for a sound that you heard as a kid in church. One development in jazz since you and Wynton got together has been a burgeoning of black musicians with church backgrounds and southern roots. This coincides with a period when MTV and hip-hop were rising in visibility and influence, and jazz wasnt part of the zeitgeist. Any speculations?

Well, I cant speak for anybody elses experience. I can only tell you that this was the source of my upbringing and what led me into the piano, led me into jazz music, and that sound spoke to me. Now, did it speak to me differently than it spoke to Charles Mingus from Los Angeles, California? Probably not. I dont know.

Im thinking of the time and place in which you grew up.

Thats still so personal. The only thing I can tell you is, somehow or other, youve got to access two conflicting things. One is the value of something that is bigger than you, older than you, greater than you; the other is the physical organization that is from your generation. Thats the issue. If you grew up in church, then you found access to it that way. If your parents were jazz musicians, like Jason and Wynton and Branford ... Look, they didnt play in church. Obviously, the church is not the only way to find it. I think the main key for any jazz artist, any serious artist of any style, is you must find a connection with the beginning of it somehow. Somehow. It is never going to be enough for it to come just from your generation. Thats never enough. Youre not going to find anything great without it.

With your own label, do you plan to document your work more frequently?

Well, Ive been documenting a lot. That hasnt been the problem. There are a whole bunch of records still to come out. Oh yes! But Im just starting to put the stuff out. We certainly wont be waiting another eight years to put out a record. It will be more like six months.

Primarily trio, or diverse contexts?

Its diverse. I have a solo piano record thats already done. I have another trio record of original music thats done. Ive got some septet stuff from live shows that I plan to put outI dont know if Im going to go in and redo it. But yes, Im always trying to deal with a diversified viewpoint.

Any special projects for the spring and summer?

The most important concerts that I have coming up are with the Atlanta Symphony. [These occurred on April 4th-6th.] Were doing Gershwins Concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra. Thats important to me, because thats the first major symphony orchestra in the United States that weve done this work with. I hit it off with Robert Spano; hes a great conductor over there. So Im hoping that we can do a lot more work with them. Im talking to him about possibly trying to do the same sort of thing with the Ravel Left Hand Concerto that I did with the Concerto in F. For me, that would be a huge undertaking, and it would take a tremendous amount of time and effort to pull off. But we are discussing it. At this stage of my career, Im interested in meaningful collaboration. Its certainly a little more streamlined. Im not interested necessarily in just the regular play-gigs type of career.

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Ted Panken interviewed Marcus Roberts on March 24, 2009.

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April 17, 2009 · 3 comments