A family relic passed down to a youngster. A trip to a special event.
It’s impossible to know the impact of such simple gestures.
Hank Roberts’ future was shaped by two opportunities he received nearly 60 years ago as a kid growing up in Terre Haute.
As a Meadows Elementary fifth-grader, Roberts was given his grandfather’s violin to use in the school’s music program. His mother had played that instrument, too. Once in the ensemble, young Hank saw a friend playing in the cello section and liked the sound. Soon, Roberts’ mom bought him a cello at Paige’s Music downtown.
One seed was planted.
A few years later, Roberts attended a concert at Indiana State University featuring jazz legends The Dave Brubeck Quartet.
“I went home and said, ‘I want to learn drums,’” Roberts recalled last week.
Another seed had been planted. And, they grew and bore fruit.
Eventually, Roberts expanded his skills by playing jazz trombone, blues guitar and classical cello while rising from Woodrow Wilson Junior High to Wiley and Terre Haute South high schools and then ISU. By the time he turned 18, Roberts zeroed in on jazz cello and spent a year in ISU’s music program.
“I got kind of itchy to do the improvisation and jazz, and went to Boston,” Roberts said.
He studied awhile at renowned Berklee College of Music in Boston, before exploring the New York City jazz scene.
Four decades-plus later, Roberts has recorded nearly 40 albums as a band leader and contributing musician, and tours North America and the globe with various ensembles. A critic for All About Jazz in 2021 called him “a world-class cellist who could easily excel in any music genre.” Roberts and his wife Jane — who was a Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College student when they met — live in Ithaca, New York, a quaint college town that fits his Terre Haute-shaped lifestyle.
Roberts will be inducted into the Wabash Valley Musicians Hall of Fame on Sunday, Sept. 15 in the Zorah Shrine at 420 N. Seventh St. in Terre Haute. His fellow inductees include Scott Aselage, Joe Craft, Pete Ford, Frank Manderino, John Newman, Eric O’Brien, David Orman, Patti Reed, Karen Smith, Scott Switzer and Donnie Wollam.
“It means a lot to me that people back there are recognizing the work we’ve done and my connections to Terre Haute,” Roberts said.
Hauteans of a certain age likely remember Roberts best from his 1970s performances in town. He led the Hank Roberts Quarter jazz fusion group, collaborating with musicians like Jerome Cheatham in venues like Bacchi’s on Wabash Avenue, and played in the iconic Terre Haute band The Soul Messengers.
“I still believe there’s an engine inside of me that I developed in those early days that’s still a part of me now,” Roberts said. “I use that as an inspiration for what I do.”
His music blends jazz, folk, R&B and classical genres, with improvisational elements from his cello (and sometimes vocals) and the accompanying instrumentalists. As Roberts puts it in a video about the Hank Roberts Sextet’s 2021 album “Science of Love,” their sound is “something that reaches for a kind of revelatory excitement that can happen in a collaborative improvisational realm.”
He recommends that album for the curious back in Terre Haute who might want to sample his sound. “That one is a little more adventurous,” he said.
Roberts also plays in smaller combos, such as his Hank Roberts Trio. That unit also features drummer Ashley Ickes, and pianist Chad Lieberman. Roberts performed in a featured role with the Bill Frisell Quartet in the ‘80s, the Arcado String Trio, Miniature and alongside several other band leaders. He’s recorded 10 albums with Frisell, including 2019’s “Harmony” on Blue Note Records, regarded as a significant label in pop music history.
Listeners abroad like his sound, too. He received the German Recording Critics Award in 2010 for his album “Green,” with Jim Black and Marc Ducret.
“I’ve done a fairly broad range of stylistic things over the years,” Roberts said.
He and Frisell have concerts upcoming, as does his Hank Roberts Trio, another combo of musicians who play Persian and Arabic instruments, and trio with New Orleans instrumentalists. Their destinations range from Europe to Canada and the U.S. New recordings are planned for this year and next.
Ironically, Roberts favors home over the road, though he enjoys performing. “I’m a bit of a homebody. I prefer not to be on planes, but that’s part of my work,” he said.
Home often finds him gardening alongside his wife. Their four children and two grandchildren live in various parts of the country, including Ithaca.
That town of 32,108 in New York’s Finger Lakes region offered Roberts a space to reflect during the pandemic, when live performances and travel subsided. He used the lull “just to see what else is out there in the world and in my life. But I’m back in there full speed.”
Roberts hopes his tour schedule provides a window to attend the Sept. 15 Wabash Valley Musicians Hall of Fame ceremony. It would be a trip down memory lane for Roberts — back to the days when he worked by day at the New Deli in downtown Terre Haute and by night as a musician, influenced by talented players here such as venerable pianist and ISU professor John Spicknall.
“It’s interesting to reflect back on those times,” Roberts said, “and the music we were playing there.”
