Opening Reception -'A Drummer's Perspective: Behind the Drums, Behind the Scene'

For me as a performer there are two worlds: the world experienced by the audience and the one I experience as a performer.  My experience encompasses the entire macrocosm of a musician/performer. I experience much of what the audience cannot.  Whereas the audience views and interacts with the musicians almost entirely from in front of the stage, my vantages and experiences are almost entirely from behind the drums and other private, more personal settings behind the scenes.  At events, when I am not presently playing I am generally watching and shooting photos from the side and back of the stage or in staging areas, greenrooms and other offstage spaces.

About Rudy Royston
Sometime in early 2018, while dabbling with taking instagram photos with my android cellphone, I began to develop a love for photography. This love was solidified before the years end when I received a little Nikon point and shoot as a Christmas gift from my wife and kids. I thought of photography the same way I think of music: all styles and genres are good and they all help inform the style of music I play most. Photography for me was the same. I took photos of everything, experimenting with everything from still life to street to landscape to portraits…anything I could capture I captured…and still do.

Though I had been working as a professional musician since the late 80’s I didn’t start touring nationally or internationally until moving east from Colorado in 2006. By 2020, with a newer Fuji camera in hand, I began documenting the many people and places to which I now had access. 

I often found myself frustrated because I saw so many shots I wished I could take while I was in the process of playing the drums. I started keeping my camera close and sometimes, between songs or even between choruses, I would shoot (being careful to maintain a low profile and my professionalism as a musician!) From this vantage point I was able to capture a relatively unique perspective: the musicians and performance from behind the drums—you’ll notice a part of my cymbal in many of these photos. What started as a somewhat frustrating practice soon became a perspective that gifted me with an awareness of the human qualities of my peers and the excitement of capturing the exchange of energies between musicians and between musicians and audiences. Of course the time spent performing is just a small part of being a musician. Many other photographs in this show were taken in green rooms, backstage at festivals and clubs, and in rehearsals. 

Over the past five years I have had prints published in magazines, as album covers, for advertising products, restaurants, food, portraits, etc., but this is my first full scale show. I’m grateful to The Jazz Gallery for this opportunity to share my perspective with you and I look forward to more photos and the lessons the camera and those who inspire and teach me will bring about life, love, humanity, beauty and art.