Thank You!

Many thanks to Jim Dee, designer of this website and devotee of my piano music since his teens, without whose expertise, creativity, commitment and generosity the site would not exist.

Many thanks to my wife and love of so many years, Teresa Jones-Roberts, not only for her profound faith in me and encompassing support and devotion, but for her crucial work on this website and countless hours typesetting my music for publication.

Thanks to my parents, who are no longer of this world, for their early encouragement and support of my determination to be an artist. Thanks to my first grade teacher, Virginia Lloyd Eselin for the consolation of her understanding me when so few did. And thanks to my cousins of the Roberts family for their various means of encouragement early in my life, Jackie, Glenda, Bo and Allen.

I express my gratitude to my closest friends, oldest friends and many people who have encouraged me and helped me to flourish in many ways: Steve Shepard, Fred Dale, Scott Kirby, Ann Westerberg, Audrey Whipps Field, Rene Gautier Hague, Trebor Tichenor, John Dawson, Takasi Hamada, Tom McDermott, Brian Keenan and Joani Holmes, Marie Dominique Verdier-Kirby, Frank French and Carolyn Massonneau-French, Jack Rummel, Rich Egan, Morten Gunnar Larsen, Rod and Carol Tillman, Fergus (Randall Stone), Ann Edwards, Sheila Holtgrieve and Dennis Schnabel, Karen Ann Simons, Carol McMillen, Lewis Motisher, Eric Jones and Donna Chnupa, Jack and Nita Dupen, Darrell and Norma Woodruff, Fred and Marianna Jensen, Dale and Robin Holtz Williams, Vernon and Mattie Johnson, Vicki Picou, Richard and Susan Larsen, P. R. Gibson, Bob and Nancy Martin, George Willick, Del and Nor Sewell, Trond Lindheim, Andy Campbell, Michael Hoffman, John Hancock, David Reffkin, Bing Gibbs, Steve Hancoff, Richard Riley, Paul Bailey, Reese Partridge, Virginia Tichenor, William Bailey, Giichi Oya, Hiromi Nakaoka, Hideo Shinma, George Winston, Joshua Rifkin, Robert Hardaway, Mark Nuismer, Carl "Sonny" Leland, Tom McWay, Mark Froelich, Raul Casso, Virtue Ishihara and Joe Adams. Thanks also to everyone who contributed to my effort to establish the home base in Missouri in 2001.

Finally, I thank my inlaws, John Paul and Catherine Jones for their kindness, and my step daughters, Alison and Jessie Badrous, not only for their helpfulness and support, but for having adjusted at all to having a difficult artist in the house.

- David Thomas Roberts

Contact

David Thomas Roberts
1862 Pomar Way
Walnut Creek, CA 94598

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Links

Music

• Scott Kirby
• Frank French
• Brian Keenan
• Takasi Hamada
• Morten Gunnar Larsen
• Steve Rouse
• CD Baby

Art

• Steve Shepard
• Scott Kirby
• Raw Vision
• Detour Art
• Artist-Xchange
• Paul Chatem

Writing

• Lavender Ink

Biography

Composer-pianist, visual artist and writer David Thomas Roberts was born in Moss Point, Mississippi in 1955 and was painting, composing and writing by age eight. He has written over 120 works for piano and numerous chamber, vocal and electronic pieces. Though he has worked in various genres from his late teens, it is for his unique contribution to New Ragtime and its related idiom, Terra Verde, that he is best known. While still in his twenties, he came to be regarded as the leading living composer of piano rags and was hailed by New Orleans historian Al Rose as "the most important composer of this half century in America."

As a pianist, David has concertized from Oslo Concert Hall to the major cities of Japan to New York's 92nd Street Y and throughout the U.S. His compositions have been recorded by a great variety of soloists and ensembles, from Japanese guitarist Takasi Hamada to Norway's Ophelia Orchestra. His music has been heard on the major media venues of North America from ABC TV's Good Morning America to National Public Radio's All Things Considered and across Canada on CBC radio. In 2003 he accompanied the Oakland Ballet with arrangements of works by Classic Ragtime composers. He is a frequent recipient of grants from Meet the Composer.

David Thomas Roberts' visual art was featured in the winter 1994-95 issue of Raw Vision, the premier magazine devoted to Outsider and Visionary Art. His poetry has frequently appeared in independent periodicals and is included in Another South, an anthology of experimental poetry published in 2003 by University of Alabama Press. As a scholar, he has authored entries in The New Grove Dictionary of American Music.