Gregory Charles Royal, also known as Chuck Royal, is an American musician, trombonist, composer, writer, co-founder of The BeBop Channel Corporation, the former parent owner of JazzTimes.[1] [2] founder of the New York Jazz Film Festival, a former judge on America's Hot Musician.[3][4] and the former artistic director of the American Youth Symphony (AYS) in Washington, D.C.[5]
Early life and education
As a student at Howard University,[6] he received the 1982 DownBeat Magazine Student Music Award for Jazz Vocal Group: Graduate College Outstanding Performance in the Jazz Instrumental Soloist Category.[7] He graduated from Howard University with a Master of Music in Jazz Studies.[5]
Career
Royal played with the Duke Ellington Orchestra (1989–99), Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers,[8] Slide Hampton and his World of Trombones[9] and Howard University Jazz Ensemble.[10] He has appeared onstage as a trombonist with the Broadway shows Five Guys Named Moe[11] and Jelly's Last Jam.[12]
Royal has also written and appeared in a play God Doesn't Mean You Get To Live Forever, presented in March 2012 at the Baruch Performing Arts Center,[13] and in 2022 at Theatre Row on 42nd Street in New York.[14] The December 2012 production was mounted as a series of performances in New York at the Baruch Performing Arts Center starring Gregory Charles Royal, Frenchie Davis (in the role of "Reese Noel") and The Reverend Dr. James A. Forbes Jr. as himself. "God Doesn't Mean You Get To Live Forever delves into the notion that belief in God may not translate into the eventuality of everlasting life and the conflict such a notion brings upon a gospel musician."[15]
Royal wrote and appeared in the short film World's Not for Me, in which he plays a jazz musician who awakens from a near 30 year coma to find a world he no longer recognizes musically, culturally or financially. The film won the Harlem Spotlight Best Narrative Short Award at the Harlem International Film Festival in September, 2016.[16]
References
Bibliography
- Scott Harris, "Prince of the Pick up Picks Up The Pieces", Los Angeles Times, February 11, 1997
- Leonard Feather, Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz, Oxford University Press, 1999
- RPM Magazine, Volume 62, No. 10, October 9, 1995
- Life 1999 Universal Pictures