The acclaimed blind pianist who honed his craft playing with Wynton Marsalis and Seiji Ozawa now pioneers accessible music technology while leading The Modern Jazz Generation into uncharted creative territory.

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Today, we're putting *The Tonearm*'s needle on pianist **Marcus Roberts**.

Roberts plays jazz piano like he's lived through its entire history. His style pulls from Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller as much as it does from bebop. He spent years in Wynton Marsalis's band, has performed piano concertos with Seiji Ozawa, and today leads The Modern Jazz Generation, a 12-piece ensemble encompassing three decades of musicians.

Roberts is here today to talk about something beyond performance. He's one of twenty artists awarded a grant from the Doris Duke Foundation's Performing Arts Technologies Lab. His project tackles a technical problem that's plagued remote music collaboration: latency. He's working to get the delay below 40 milliseconds so musicians in different cities can actually play together in real time.

Roberts has been blind since age five, and he's used technology his whole life to access music and create it. From Braille music notation to AI-powered tools, he shows us how tech can serve artists rather than replace them. And that’s just a hint of where this conversation goes.

(The first two musical excerpts heard in the interview are from a Marcus Roberts live performance, Jazz in Marciac 2024)

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[00:01:37] The origin of solving latency for remote collaboration
[00:05:29] Best practices and protocols for remote performance
[00:07:52] How Zoom works differently for music versus voice
[00:10:32] The creative dynamics of remote versus in-person playing
[00:13:35] Environmental benefits and global collaboration possibilities
[00:15:58] Technology leveling the playing field for blind musicians
[00:19:33] Embracing vulnerability and asking for help
[00:20:15] Advocating and inventing to implement creative life
[00:23:52] Braille literacy crisis in the blind community
[00:27:10] Music must come from the body
[00:28:55] Balancing natural musicianship with technology
[00:32:30] Technology at its best serves human mission
[00:34:19] AI and the "we don't need you" problem
[00:35:03] Experimentation and authenticity in technology choices
[00:37:35] Jazz as dance music and the test of musical validity
[00:41:58] Recent technology breakthroughs and tools
[00:46:41] New music from The Modern Jazz Generation
[00:47:56] "Who Gets to Decide?" - performing from Tomorrow's Promises

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Visit Marcus Roberts at → https://www.marcusroberts.com

Check out Marcus Roberts' music on Qobuz → https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/interpreter/marcus-roberts/17907

For extensive show notes, links, and podcast information, go to https://podcast.thetonearm.com

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