photo by Gene Martin
Pianist Marcus Roberts has broad reach and pushme-pullyou ideas, reharmonizing Jelly Roll Morton and improvising freely with banjoist Bela Fleck, as I detail in my latest column in CityArts-New York.
At Jazz at Lincoln Center Robert, the blind visionary, led a sextet that hewed to Morton’s structures while incorporating a handful of solo styles from different jazz eras, and on the album Across the Imaginary Divide he and Fleck compare, contrast and co-join their individually distinct musical directions. The two are currently on tour (backed by Roberts’ trio mates bassist Rodney Jordan and drummer Jason Marsalis), from Maine to San Francisco, making music that (like it or not) stands most genre assumptions upside down.