“The Virtuoso: Marcus Roberts” Documentary Film Screening and Moderated Question and Answer Session
January 26, 2021, 4:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Part of the Vulnerable Virtuosities: Disability in Competition and Concert Workshop.
This screening of the documentary film “Marcus Roberts: The Virtuoso” is connected to Dr. Stefan Honisch's book project, entitled Vulnerable Virtuosities: Disability in Competition and Concert. Dr. Honisch's book explores how descriptions of musical virtuosity in competitions and concerts depend on idealized notions of musical ability shaped, in turn, by the systemic privilege and oppression that intersect race, gender, sexuality, disability, and class. The book’s projected third chapter zooms in on the documentary film, narrated by trumpeter, composer, and educator Wynton Marsalis (born 1961), and featuring the blind African-American pianist, composer, and teacher Marcus Roberts (born 1963). Roberts himself is the laureate of two competitions, the Great American Piano Competition in 1983, and the inaugural Thelonius Monk International Piano Competition in 1987.
The screening was followed by a question-and-answer session that welcomed reflections on how the film represents the multiple dimensions of Roberts’ music-making, career, and life.
ACCESSIBILITY: This event included Communication Access Real Time (CART) and American Sign Language (ASL)-English for its entire duration.
Organized and moderated by Dr. Stefan Sunandan Honisch, a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Theatre and Film, at the University of British Columbia. His postdoctoral research explores the relationship between aesthetics and politics in Helen Keller’s musical life, documented in Keller’s own writings, and in contemporaneous newspaper, magazines, photographs, and films.
This event took place in the past, and registrations are no longer open.
