As Serenity Approaches
Roberts has a way of letting his technique get in the way. The man's always showing off how many notes he can play, rarely letting the audience get inside the spaces between them. Anyone who can get past the opening take on "Cherokee" is a brave, patient soul. But Roberts is more Jelly Roll Morton than Thelonious Monk, anyway, a stride fetishist who cut his teeth playing in postbop bands (most notably, Wynton Marsalis's). Indeed, it's Marsalis's cameo that makes this record worth the price of admission. When he shows up laying down some old-school muted horn on Morton's "King Porter Stomp," you wonder why he hides that sly humor and warmth on his own recordings. But this is Roberts' coming-out party: His take on Duke Ellington's "Creole Stomp" will break your heart, and his "Where or When" will put it back together again.--Robert Wilonsky