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On his first new album in eight years, New Orleans Meets Harlem Vol. 1 (J-Master), Roberts is joined by bassist Roland Guerin and drummer Jason Marsalis for a program that includes some Jelly Roll Morton gems from the earliest days of Crescent City jazz, a couple Scott Joplin rags, Duke Ellington’s “Black & Tan Fantasy,” a few Fats Waller classics, two Thelonious Monk pieces, and a single original.
It’s too bad Roberts is such a lousy salesman, because the music on the album is exceptionally well-made–it’s pretty great how the trio can transform a piece like Joplin’s “The Entertainer” with bits of stride, elegant hard bop, swing, and other unexpected accents, all without destroying its familiar character. Roberts doesn’t reinvent the piece so much as use it to illustrate what some of its components contributed to the four or five subsequent decades of jazz.
