Festival - American Patchwork Quartet (12:10pm & 12:35pm)
American Patchwork Quartet (APQ) is a groundbreaking project from Clay Ross, the Grammy-winning founder of chart-topping Southern roots music group Ranky Tanky. A native of South Carolina, Ross moved to NYC in 2002 and has since collaborated with artists as diverse as Gregory Porter, Cyro Baptista, Snarky Puppy, and Bobby McFerrin. Winning multiple grants through the U.S. State Department, he has toured worldwide as a Cultural Ambassador in over 30 countries since 2006.
APQ is Rini (vocals), Clay Ross (guitar/vocals), Rudy Royston (drums) and Yasushi Nakamura (bass), all highly acclaimed artists and educators. Together they are on a mission to reclaim the immigrant soul of American Roots Music, showcasing the dynamic diversity of contemporary culture by re-imagining timeless songs from America's past.
Rini a.k.a. Harini Raghavan, is one of New York’s great talents in Indian classical and film music. She’s as dynamic and expressive a singer as she is a carnatic violinist. With her epic, sweeping Indian-flavored art-rock band, also called Rini, she has released 3 albums and 2 EPs with an Independent Music Award nomination and a feature in Rolling Stone India. Born in Chennai and trained in Indian Classical from a very young age, she moved to the United States to attend Berklee School of Music, graduating with a major in Electronic Production and Design. She has performed and recorded with Grammy winning artists like A.R.Rahman and Bill Whelan and popular Israeli Singer-Songwriter Idan Raichel, and also composed music for the trending Indian Netflix show ‘The Fame Game’ starring the Bollywood icon Madhuri Dixit.
Since 2015, Clay has collaborated as teaching artist in residence at Carnegie Hall in New York. Through this work, engaging court-involved youth, writing lullabies with expectant mothers in underserved communities, recording, and performing, Ross has established a collaborative creative process that has laid the foundation for APQ.
Rudy Royston has been a professional teacher, drummer, and percussionist for almost twenty years. He studied classical percussion at University of Denver where he earned undergraduate degrees in Music and English. He also earned his teacher certification credentials from Metropolitan State College of Denver. Royston grew up playing drums in church, and found his voice while studying with Colorado’s celebrated trumpeter Ron Miles, whom Royston deems his greatest influence, and with whom he has played since 1991. He has taught, recorded, and performed all styles of music from jazz to marching percussion.
Since moving to Piscataway, New Jersey in 2006, Mr. Royston has completed a Masters in Music degree from Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and performed with many of today’s finest Jazz musicians—Javon Jackson, Bill Frisell, Les McCann, David Gilmore, Andy Milne, Shane Endsley, JD Allen, Sean Jones, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Edward Simone, Jennifer Holiday, Mark Gross, Ralph Bowen, Bruce Barth, George Colligan, Don Byron, Stanley Cowell, Jonathan Kreisberg, Jenny Scheinmenn, and Craig Handy, to name a few. A lover of all genres of music, he continues to expand his musical horizons.
Born in Tokyo, Japan, Yasushi Nakamura received a BA in Jazz Performance from Berklee School of Music in 2000 and was awarded a full scholarship to The Juilliard School for his Artist Diploma in 2006. In 2016, he released his first album "A Lifetime Treasure" and in 2017 his second album "Hometown," was awarded "Album of the Year" in JazzLife magazine. Nakamura’s career is flourishing, with consistent engagements at premier jazz festivals including Tokyo, North Sea, Monterey, Ravinia, and venues such as Birdland, Village Vanguard, the Blue Note, the Kennedy Center, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and Carnegie Hall.
