Curtis Brothers Trio – Latin Jazz Concert

Currently Zaccai is a professor of music at the University of Hartford: Jackie McLean Jazz Studies Division and University of Rhode Island. Besides being an educator Zaccai authored two books “Art of the Guajeo” and “Theory of the Common Voicing” which are meant to aid students in their Jazz and Latin Jazz education. Zaccai composes and arranges for his own quartet and trio as well as for artists such as Little Johnny Rivero, Steve Kroon, Sonido Solar and more. In 2003 he was chosen as a winner of the ASCAP Young Jazz Composer’s competition and each year consecutively through 2006. Zaccai and his quartet were selected by the U.S. State Department to be in the American Music Abroad (Jazz Ambassadors) program two times in 2006. They performed in Bangladesh, Calcutta, Bangalore, Mumbai, Sri Lanka and Maldives. In 2007 Zaccai Curtis was awarded the ‘Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism’s Artist Fellowship’ for ‘original composition.’ In 2017 Curtis became a Chamber Music America: “New Jazz Works” grant recipient. In 2020 Zaccai was voted as the Rising Star in the Critics Poll for Downbeat Magazine. Most recently, Curtis has been invited to be the special guest director for 2023 CMEA Southern Regional High School Jazz Band.

When Zaccai is not busy being a sideman, he performs his own music with his group ‘Zaccai Curtis Quartet’ and ‘Sonido Solar’ and after five successful releases; He plans on releasing his next recording “Cubop Lives” in 2023.

Zaccai, along with his brother Luques, has developed the record label TRRcollective which is a collective of musicians that produce their own music and release it together. He is also proud to have produced and released the GRAMMY nominated album, ‘Entre Colegas’ by Andy González (2016). Zaccai has created the first ever music news app developed for record labels, artists and venues. ‘The Riff: Music News‘ available for free on iTunes and android.

While attending high school, Luques was also very fortunate to study the Afro-Caribbean genre with bass greats Andy Gonzalez and Joe Santiago. With his talent and hard work he earned a full scholarship to the prestigious Berklee College Of Music in Boston. There he studied with John Lockwood and Ron Mahdi. While in Boston he was also able to work with great musicians such as Gary Burton, Ralph Peterson, Donald Harrison, Christian Scott, and Francisco Mela.

Now living in the New York area, Mr. Curtis has been performing worldwide with Eddie Palmieri, Stefon Harris, Ralph Peterson, Christian Scott, Sean Jones, Orrin Evans, Christian Sands, and others.

He is the recent recipient of the 2016 Down Beat Rising Star Bassist on the Critics Poll and also received the Ralph Bunche Fellowship to complete his Masters Degree at the Mason Gross School of the Arts. He co-owns a record label called Truth Revolution Records alongside his brother, Zaccai. They have five releases under “Curtis Brothers” with the most recent being “Algorithm”.

Luques was also part of Brian Lynch’s Grammy winning CD “Simpatico” and his Grammy nominated “Madera Latino” as well as Christian Scott’s Grammy nominated CD “Rewind That”. He also produced Grammy nominated “Entre Colegas” by Andy Gonzalez. You can hear him on Eddie Palmieri’s “Sabiduria” and “Mi Luz Mayor”; Gary Burton “Next Generations”; Dave Valentin “Come Fly With Me”; Sean Jones’ “Im*Pro*Vise”,”Roots”,”Kaleidoscope”,and “The Search Within”; Orrin Evans’ CD “Faith In Action”. As a sideman, Luques Curtis has participated in over 100 recordings.

To date, Jerome has performed, toured, and recorded with legendary musicians like Sonny Rollins, Hank Jones, Gerald Wilson, Christian McBride, Ron Carter, George Cables, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Wynton Marsalis (J@LC), The Count Basie Orchestra, Philip Bailey, Henry Butler, and countless others. He has also made recordings and shared the stage with contemporary musicians Sean Jones, Camille Thurman, Jazzmeia Horn, Tadataka Unno, Christian Sands, Charenee Wade, and Bokani Dyer, to name a few. He has composed music for and is the musical director for Maurice Chestnut’s dance production Beat’s Rhymes and Tap Shoes.

In the summer of 2007, Jerome earned a Masters of Music from the prestigious Juilliard School in Manhattan, NY. In 2014, he passed Jazz At Lincoln Centers Swing University 301 history course, the most comprehensive study of jazz from a non-performance perspective available.” Jazz At Lincoln Center has Jerome Jennings on file as an accredited jazz scholar. Jerome was the Resident Director of The Juilliard Jazz Orchestra from fall 2017 to 2021. While on faculty at Juilliard, he designed a class entitled The Juilliard Jazz Community Project. Jerome is a professor of graduate jazz history at Montclair State University.

Currently, Jerome is keeping busy teaching, conducting clinics, and educational youth outreach nationally and internationally. He is one of the most successful in Black American music education. Jerome has been an artist-in-residence and has lectured at dozens of Universities and Academy, nationally and internationally,