Reviews
"Marcus Roberts, Roland Guerin, Jason Marsalis - to work with these three geniuses gives me so many surprises, so much pleasure and the deep satisfaction of making music."
Maestro Seiji Ozawa, Musical Director, Vienna State Opera
"Glowing is the proper response to Roberts' music"
Josef Woodard, The Independent
"His friendly, genuine manner was enough to bring patrons into his world of abstract jazz and take them on a journey...What fun - waiting for surprise after musical surprise."
William R. Wood, Kalamazoo Gazette
"Mr. Roberts...plays almost completely free of clichés, and while the intellectual construct within which he works is old - the application of the modern on a foundation of tradition - his ability in all his idioms seemed startlingly thorough."
Peter Watrous, New York Times
"...one of the more unforgettable elements: the astonishing performance of pianist Roberts who, with his trio and the BSO [Boston Symphony Orchestra] played Gershwin's 'Rhapsody in Blue'"
T.J. Medrek, Boston Herald
"This was followed by Seiji (Ozawa) conducting The Boston Symphony in George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in a spectacular performance featuring The Marcus Roberts Trio."
Dave Sear, NYStringer.com
"That the huge crowd at Orchestra Hall on Friday night responded...with an instantaneous standing ovation said a great deal about Roberts' ability to keep an audience in his spell."
Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune
"Roberts and company received two long standing ovations and were coaxed for two encores....Roberts let the audience know that the future of jazz is in capable hands indeed."
Tim Barnes, The News-Gazette
"The sheer power and beauty of Roberts' creations...warrant further investigation."
Larry Blumenfeld, Jazziz
"[Roberts'] writing is often brilliant in its juxtaposition of distant musical eras, ...its believable evocation of mood, ...and the way solos are made to emerge organically from the ensembles."
Thomas Conrad, Downbeat
"Although "classically" trained, Roberts is primarily a jazz pianist and composer. He is, therefore, a musician to whom improvisation is not only a living, but also an essential art. The results in the "Rhapsody in Blue" were fascinating."
Stephen Wigler, The Baltimore Sun
"The Marcus Roberts Trio provided one of the finest, most memorable nights for Greenwood audiences in a very long time."
D.S. Lawson, The Index-Journal
"Don't miss this masterful exploration of the blues by pianist Marcus Roberts....Roberts and his mates have absorbed the history of jazz into their playing, but this is no sepia-toned tribute to a bygone era....It's hard to overestimate Roberts' achievements as composer, arranger and pianist.
David Simpson, The Virginian-Pilot
"Marcus Roberts is a superb improviser with a considerable compositional gift."
Chris Parker, The Times (London)
"There's an easy tendency to criticize the astonishing technical facility of Marcus Roberts and his associates as being too facile...when Marcus Roberts, or Wynton Marsalis for that matter, fly along brilliantly on their instruments, one never intuits a psyche on the edge of abandon but rather one recognizes extraordinary training and immaculate control...Their supreme adroitness still legitimately feeds the thrill of the music."
Richard Perry, The Ottawa Citizen
"Blues [for the New Millennium] rarely falters in its grooves. Thanks are due to an irresistible rhythm section, ...and Roberts' compositional wit"
Bruce Handy, Time
"No matter what guise they assume, however, the blues are always essential to jazz, and Roberts and his 12 gifted young musicians come to delightful grips with that fact on Blues for the New Millennium."
Geoffrey Himes, The Washington Post
"A great, exhilaratingly loose act of homage [The Joy of Joplin] for a founding father by one great younger jazz pianist."
CD Review, The Buffalo News
"And what became clear by the conclusion of this fascinating program was that Roberts...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."
Don Heckman, Los Angeles Times
"On The Joy of Joplin, Roberts once again forces us to re-examine what jazz is and where jazz is now. That's good. It's one reason why he is a pivotal figure in today's jazz scene."
Paul J. MacArthur, The Houston Press
"There may not be another pianist alive who could pull off such a feat while staying so true to the spirit of Joplin's compositions, if only because Roberts has the historical knowledge, creative imagination and technical prowess to sustain the experiment. Yet one ultimately comes away from this recording with new reverence for Joplin, who emerges as the forger of an indestructible ragtime vocabulary and as a pervasive influence on generations of composers yet unborn when he was in his prime."
Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune
"Marcus Roberts...has made a name on the symphonic circuit playing "Rhapsody in Blue" which he fills with extended and dazzling improvisations that I can't imagine Gershwin wouldn't love."
Judith Green, The Atlanta Journal
"Roberts demonstrates his technical virtuosity and passionate intelligence in impressive fashion. And yes, with soul."
Christopher John Farley, Time
|
