Continued: Piano professor

The three high-schoolers in Sunday afternoon's Jazz Piano Competition at the Dakota Jazz Club couldn't ask for a better judge than Marcus Roberts. The pianist, who will perform two solo recitals at the club that night, ranks with his mentor Wynton Marsalis as one of the most vociferous defenders of jazz scholarship.

"Nothing really moves forward from a point of ignorance," Roberts, 45, declared by phone while taking a break from the classes he teaches at Florida State University. "You don't want a doctor who didn't go to medical school. Most great advancements in literature and art did not come from being uncultured."

Roberts is aware of jazz fans who romanticize the late-night jam session as a substitute for the conservatory, and who deride the formal rigor of academic study as somehow stultifying the spontaneous combustion of jazz improvisation. But someone who focuses mainly on the hipster élan of, say, Thelonious Monk "doesn't appreciate the intellect behind the structures he came up with," Roberts argues. "When you study someone like Monk, you get a snapshot of how he solved problems, what he figured out. Contrary to popular belief, that doesn't limit your imagination -- quite the reverse."

As proof, he offers his own experience: "I came to jazz as a blind folk musician. I didn't know how to use my thumb to play a scale, had no clue about harmony or theory. I didn't start in a conservatory at [age] 4, but in a Baptist church at 8, with a disability."

Duke on the dial

Growing up in Jacksonville, Fla., Roberts, who lost his sight when he was 5, attended Ray Charles' alma mater, the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, his appetite for jazz whetted by hearing the music of Duke Ellington on the radio. Self-taught until he could afford private lessons at age 12, he then studied under renowned pianist Leonidas Lipovetsky at Florida State. As a teen, he won the young artists competition at the 1982 National Association of Jazz Educators conference -- with Ellis Marsalis, father of Wynton, among the attendees.

He joined Wynton's influential ensemble in 1985 and stayed for six years, riding shotgun through the trumpeter's battles on behalf of jazz tradition. Roberts' immaculate tone, investigative phrasing and innovative arrangements reveal a stylist who has spent long hours on the history of his instrument, from ragtime through swing to the bebop of Monk. Many of the 14 albums he issued under his own name from 1988 through 2001 were, by jazz standards, commercially successful.

Then he suddenly stopped making records. Until "New Orleans Meets Harlem, Volume 1" came out a few weeks ago, Roberts hadn't put out a new collection of material in nearly eight years. One reason is his work at Florida State, where he began teaching in 2004. But he also "wanted to let the dust settle and have the Internet mature in terms of content distribution." (The album is available for download at MarcusRoberts.com as well as from more traditional outlets.) "There are probably seven other records than this one I could have put out right now, including original music and new standards and big projects. There is a suite of original music I will be putting out this fall."

Stubbornly true to his own traditionalism, the new album treads familiar ground with a refreshed perspective. Nearly all of the dozen songs have appeared on other discs by Roberts, yet there are noteworthy new arrangements of songs by his heroes: Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, Ellington and Monk.

Asked about the philosophy behind "New Orleans Meets Harlem," he offered an incisive commentary on the relationship between the two jazz meccas:

"Duke Ellington asked Sidney Bechet to play with him because he wanted that deliciously intoxicating New Orleans sound, but he wanted to slick it up and make it faster. In my opinion, the Harlem guys were more interested in virtuosity and sound projection, the more classical tradition of piano, but they wanted to get that blues and folk and gospel feeling of New Orleans. Naturally, all these musicians started to influence each other."

Far from being a retread of already shopworn classics, the new record deftly chronicles and updates that cross-pollination. Expect more of the same tonight.

"When I do a piano recital, my plan is to present enough nuance that people are intrigued with the power of the instrument," he said. "Lately I've been working on a sense of counterpoint -- balancing one line against other lines and searching for different sonorities, like Debussy and Ravel, trying to push the limits of the instrument. I am using as many vehicles as I can understand."