Marcus Roberts

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Marcus Roberts was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1963. He has been blind since the age of five because of glaucoma and cataracts. His mother was a gospel singer, his father a dock worker. He learned to play the piano by picking out notes in church, had his first lesson at the age of twelve and went to the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind, where Ray Charles had also been a pupil. He later studied at Florida State University.

Music and breakthrough

In the 1980s he took the place of pianist Kenny Kirkland in Wynton Marsalis's band. His own records began with The Truth Is Spoken Here (1988) and Deep in the Shed (1990). His music is rooted in the traditional jazz of earlier times. He is influenced more by Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller than by McCoy Tyner or Bill Evans, and puts the emphasis on ragtime and stride piano rather than on bebop. In 2009 New Orleans Meets Harlem, Vol. 1 was released, with work by Scott Joplin, Duke Ellington, Morton and Waller.

Influence

Roberts also wrote a piano concerto, Spirit of the Blues, commissioned by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Savannah Music Festival, and appeared as a soloist with symphony orchestras. In 2012 he founded the band The Modern Jazz Generation. He teaches at Florida State University. He belongs to the young generation of jazz musicians who in the 1980s and 1990s made the tradition important again.

Listening

• 
  Deep in the Shed · Marcus Roberts, 1990

Discography

Studio albums

• 1988The Truth Is Spoken Here
• 1990Deep in the Shed
• 1991Alone With Three Giants
• 1991Prayer for Peace
• 1992As Serenity Approaches
• 1993If I Could Be With You
• 1996Portraits in Blue
• 1997Blues for the New Millennium

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• After Hours: Session 4^NL Reader

See also

• Neotraditional jazz (Young Lions)