Roy McGrath Trio
Roy McGrath is a Chicago-based tenor saxophonist, composer and bandleader. Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico and educated in Boston, New Orleans, and Chicago, Roy brings to bear these diverse influences in his playing and composing.
View the Trio’s Performance
Roy McGrath is a Chicago-based tenor saxophonist, composer and bandleader. Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico and educated in Boston, New Orleans, and Chicago, Roy brings to bear these diverse influences in his playing and composing. In addition to leading and recording with his own jazz ensembles, he is a member of several others and an in-demand player in the city’s jazz, funk, Latin jazz, and salsa scenes. He has led international tours to Mexico, Singapore, Korea, and China. As a composer and arranger, Roy is firmly in the jazz tradition, but his Latin American heritage is an ever-present mindset, leading to wholly original works that are a true expression of who he is. His upcoming plans include recording and releasing a new album of original compositions, Remembranzas, and leading two special big band tribute projects honoring legendary Puerto Rican composer Rafael Hernández and Dizzy Gillespie’s United Nations Orchestra.Rempis’ musical expression draws on a number of touchstones. While heavily improvisational in nature, his Greek ethnicity, studies in jazz and ethnomusicology, an appreciation for the philosophical underpinnings of contemporary composition, and a love for unforgivingly strident yelps, screeches, and squeals that can encompass the ever-evolving state of human depravity all inform his work.
A one-hour trio set of Afro-Caribbean Jazz focusing on the music of Puerto Rico led by saxophonist Roy McGrath, and featuring organist Joaquin Garcia and drummer Jonathan Wenzel. The organ trio is standard in the history of modern jazz, however it has rarely been used in an Afro-Caribbean context.
Above photo by Harvey Tillis