Marcus Roberts

In 2014, Roberts was profiled on the television show 60 Minutes.

In 2012 he founded the band The Modern Jazz Generation, which released its first album in October 2014. This band has 12 musicians ranging in age from early 20s to 50s. He served as Associate Artistic Director for the Savannah Music Festival as well as the Director of the annual Swing Central high school band competition. He is on the faculty at Florida State.

He was commissioned by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Savannah Music Festival to write his first piano concerto, Spirit of the Blues: Piano Concerto in C-Minor. He has performed as a soloist in symphony orchestras with Marin Alsop (1992) and Seiji Ozawa. He returned to Japan in September 2014 to share the stage with Ozawa and the Saito Kinen Festival Orchestra.

In the 1980s, Roberts replaced pianist Kenny Kirkland in Wynton Marsalis's band. Like Marsalis's, his music is rooted in the traditional jazz of the past. His style has been influenced more by Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller than McCoy Tyner and Bill Evans, with an emphasis on ragtime and stride piano rather than bebop. His album New Orleans Meets Harlem, Vol. 1 (2009) covers music by Scott Joplin, Duke Ellington, Morton, and Waller.

Marthaniel "Marcus" Roberts (born August 7, 1963) is an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, bandleader, and teacher.