Marthaniel “Marcus” Roberts (born August 7, 1963) is an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, bandleader, and teacher.

Roberts was born in Jacksonville, Florida. Blind since the age of five due to glaucoma and cataracts,^[1] he attended the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine, Florida, the alma mater of blind pianist Ray Charles. Roberts began teaching himself to play piano at an early age, having his first lesson at age 12, and then studying the instrument with pianist Leonidas Lipovetsky while attending Florida State University.

In the 1980s, Roberts replaced pianist Kenny Kirkland in Wynton Marsalis’s band. Like Marsalis’s, his music is rooted in the traditional jazz of the past. His style has been influenced more by Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller than McCoy Tyner and Bill Evans, with an emphasis on ragtime and stride piano rather than bebop. His album New Orleans Meets Harlem, Vol. 1 (2009) covers music by Scott Joplin, Duke Ellington, Morton, and Waller.

In 1975, Kirk suffered a major stroke which led to partial paralysis of one side of his body. He continued to perform and record, modifying his instruments to enable him to play with one arm. At a live performance at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London he even managed to play two instruments, and carried on to tour internationally and to appear on television.^[5]

He died from a second stroke in 1977, aged 42, the morning after performing in the Frangipani Room of the Indiana University Student Union in Bloomington, Indiana.