Rudy Royston studied and began to work professionally in music in Denver, Colorado, where he started to play in gospel, alternative rock and jazz bands. He had the privilege of having great trumpeter Ron Miles has teacher and started to collaborate with some of the prominent musicians of the city’s jazz scene like Fred Fuller and guitarist Bill Frisell, with whom Royston still maintains a fairly close artistic relationship. Moving to New York marked a new and decisive stage of the drummer’s affirmation at the high-level jazz circuit, and since then he recorded and performed live with some of the jazz greats. In parallel, Royston released three albums as leader, revealing an idiosyncratic composer with a free approach to jazz and a peculiar repertoire that includes jazz versions of Mozart’s compositions and Radiohead’s songs. Recently, Royston has been collaborating with important musicians of his generation and of contemporary jazz, namely saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa and bassist Linda Ho.

At Guimarães Jazz, Rudy Royston will perform with his quintet, the same band that recorded his most recent album, Flatbed Buggy, released by Greenleaf, Dave Douglas’s independent label which has been supporting some of the most original jazz projects of the last few years. With a unusual formation, including cello and accordion, the quintet explores a roots music, with approximations to blues and to Americana, and is formed by a group of talented young musicians complemented by veteran cellist Hank Roberts, an important name of New York’s avant-garde scene of the 1980s. Sounding almost like chamber music, the sonority of Rudy Royston’s quintet stands a vehicle of exploration of a flexible approach to jazz’s canon, while at the same time preserving a dimension of improvisation.