Biography
I am Ross Beatty, but you can call me "Rusty." I started in music early, with a few years of piano lessons. From grade school through college, I studied the flute. I had started playing the saxophone in high school and continued playing that through my years at Oberlin College and in its Conservatory. I worked as a teacher for many years, mostly teaching different aspects of an English curriculum at community colleges around Washington, DC. During those years I also wrote free-lance articles about local jazz players. I also studied drama, and in D.C. I helped to establish a wonderful small theatre. After working in Nepal during the late 90s, I returned to the States, moving to Providence where my sister lived. I began singing in choirs, including the gospel choir RPM Voices of Rhode Island (
https://www.rpmvoices.com/), and I worked with the vocal coach Miriam Goldsmith. I also sing at jazz jams and the Providence club Nick-A-Nees (
https://www.facebook.com/nickanees/)— and wherever else there is a microphone available to me. About six years ago, having finished 25 jazz pieces, I began a recording-with-video project at a studio in Middletown: Ross (Rusty) Beatty’s Songs (
https://www.rossbeattysongs.com/).
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I learned about Providence Village in 2018 when I was living off North Main Street and singing in the choir of Grace Church, downtown. There, a member of the church recommended the Village to me. She suggested that I join because I had had a myocardial infarction, or heart attack, and I might need rides. After the heart attack I was still able to use my accustomed modes of transportation: riding my bike and taking the bus. But I did join the Village and, especially during the Pandemic, did avail myself of the Village's online yoga classes.
After I moved downtown, I felt less connected to the Providence Village because its activities seemed to be mostly on the East Side. But now I've found the village’s Down City Circle, which meets in my building, the Regency. Due to scheduling conflicts, I've only attended one meeting but hope to make more time for it this fall. After all, I've paid my dues!
Artist's Statement
As a boy studying the flute, I learned 36 fingerings, playing European classical music, Bach and Hayden. I sang this music in church and listened to my father's LPs. I loved this classical music. In high school, I encountered another kind of music, tunes with dissonant harmonies, and different rhythms, sometimes with weird names, like "Epistrophe" and "Salt Peanuts." I learned about Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie. I listened to Stan Getz's "Focus" and Coltrane's "Africa Brass." I listened to Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess," which sounded like opera…but not quite. I listened to the Ellington big band and the Freedom Singers as well as to Daddy-o-Daley's nighttime radio show from Chicago.
What was this strange kind of music, seeming so different from Bach and Hayden? What were these peculiar rhythms and strange harmonies? I learned that these rhythms were syncopation, with stresses on the upbeat; and swing, with a pulse not on the 1 and 3 but on the 2 and 4. I learned that these weird harmonies were 7th, 9th, and 11th chords and sometimes the Lydian mode. How exciting this was.
This music is jazz, as it was when a big part of American culture, when it was proudly considered American classical. It also became a big part of my growing identity — when it was hip. Now jazz doesn't hold the same place in our culture as it once did. What I want to do is to introduce younger folks to this wonderful music and re-introduce older folks to it. And of course, I want to sing it. This is what I do, what I am about, this is what pushes me to get up every morning and, through it, make meaning out of my life.
How cool is that?
Me at the microphone this summer in a recital concert at Quebec’s 2024 Jazz Camp, singing:
Fly me to the moon
Let me play among the stars
And let me see what spring is like
On Jupiter and Mars
In other words, hold my hand
In other words, baby, kiss me Photo supplied by Jazz Camp