Royce Martin is a pianist and composer from St. Louis who taught himself piano at age 14 on a small keyboard. By 18, he was the in-house pianist at Scott Joplin House State Historic Site, the former home of the “King of Ragtime.” He returned there between semesters while in college and recorded his debut album Memories on Morgan Street: Scott Joplin Reimagined in 2023.​ In 2024, John McWhorter of The New York Times described his pianism as “sly, relatable, and brilliant.”
Royce studied Film Scoring at Berklee College of Music and has since composed original scores for platforms including HBO and Hulu. He continues to push musical boundaries through Swagtime, a genre he coined that fuses ragtime stride, bebop, and poetic rap into a new form of storytelling.
