I joined Local 802 after I was hired to play the drum chair for the first national tour of “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical.” In fact, I’ve been touring with various Broadway musicals for the past couple of years (as well as teaching privately), which has been wonderful, but my next goal is to get a Broadway chair here in NYC. I’ve been playing the drums since I was 4. I don’t come from a musical family, but for some reason my mom always loved the drums and just decided to take me to drum lessons one day. I really loved my first lesson and stuck to it ever since. I grew up playing in garage bands, school concert bands, jazz bands, in church…basically wherever they let me play. I figured out in high school that I wanted to pursue music as a career, so after graduation I enrolled at the University of Rhode Island, where I graduated in 2017 with a music ed degree. But I knew I wanted to perform. I did a lot of research on which touring shows were hiring drummers and decided to audition for the drum chair of the national tour of “Motown the Musical,” which I got. It was a big step in my career and you just can’t beat the music of Motown. It was a blast to play every night. A favorite moment from that tour was when Berry Gordy Jr., the founder of Motown Records, came to our show in California and had a meet and greet with our company! Ever since I first picked up those drum sticks at 4 years old, music has been what fuels my life. I believe that music brings people together from all corners of the world and is something that we can all share no matter what language we speak or how different we look from one another.

Jesse-Ray Leich

jrdrummer100@yahoo.com