Josephy Center Hosts: Concert Featuring David Thomas Roberts

Contemporary classical composer, pianist, painter and poet, David Thomas Roberts, was born in 1955 and began composing, painting and writing at age eight.  Since then, he has composed over 150 solo piano works as well as chamber pieces, art songs, choral music and electronic works.  As a pianist, he recorded five LPs between 1978 and 1985, and has appeared on some twenty CDs since, many of them devoted to his own compositions.  His music has been heard on the major media venues of the U.S., from ABC’s “Good Morning America” to NPR’s “All Things Considered.”

His eclectic suite for piano, New Orleans Streets (1981-85) was hailed by historian Al Rose in I remember Jazz as “the single most important contribution to the culture of New Orleans int he past fifty years.”  Trebor Tichenor referred to Roberts as “our formost composer of contemporary ragtime.”  In 2003, he accompanied the Oakland Ballet.  Roberts’visual art has been featured in the leading international Visionary/Outsider Art magazine, Raw Vision and in the 2017 New Horizons – Self Taught Art In the 21st Century show at the Hickory, North Carolina, Museum of Art.  His poetry appeared in the anthology, Another South, published by University of Alabama Press.