Festival Event · Saturday, July 25, 2026 · 7:15 PM

Pianist Zaccai Curtis, bassist Luques Curtis, and drummer Richie Barshay have played together since they were kids. Their story with Litchfield is one of the great origin tales in the Camp’s 30-year history, and tonight they return to the Mainstage as acclaimed professional musicians.

Meet the Artists

Zaccai Curtis won the 2025 GRAMMY for Best Latin Jazz Album with Cubop Lives! He and his brother founded the record label TRRcollective, a collaborative space for musicians to record and release their own music. Zaccai is on faculty at the University of Hartford’s Jackie McLean Jazz Studies Division. He has performed with Christian Scott, Cindy Blackman Santana, Lakecia Benjamin, Eddie Palmieri, Avery Sharpe, Brian Lynch, Paquito D’Rivera, Donald Harrison, and the late Ralph Peterson, among many others. A prolific composer, arranger, and author of several books including Theory of Common Voicing, he has been named in multiple DownBeat Critic’s Polls and was awarded Chamber Music America’s prestigious New Jazz Works grant in 2017. Ralph Peterson’s estate gifted Zaccai his grand piano, a tribute to their deep relationship and the esteem in which Peterson held his talent.

Luques Curtis, bassist, composer, and educator, tours extensively and has appeared with Stefon Harris, Sean Jones, Orrin Evans, Paquito D’Rivera, Christian Sands, Christian Scott, and others. He served as bassist for the great Eddie Palmieri for 14 years until Eddie’s death in 2025, and also played often with Ralph Peterson. Luques has participated in over 100 recordings. Both he and Zaccai are long-time teaching artists at Litchfield Jazz Camp and have appeared for LPA in many concerts at the Palace Theater Poli Club, the Milton Music series, and on the Litchfield Jazz Festival Mainstage.

Richie Barshay, to quote his official bio, “began drumming at an early age and continues banging on things worldwide to this day.” Herbie Hancock recruited him out of New England Conservatory in the early 2000s for a world tour, and he did get his degree. Since then he has toured and recorded with Chick Corea, Esperanza Spalding, The Klezmatics, Fred Hersch, and Kenny Werner, and has also performed with Natalie Merchant, Bobby McFerrin, and Pete Seeger. Richie has traveled across five continents teaching and performing as an American Musical Envoy with the US State Department since 2004, has over 100 recordings, and has graced the Litchfield Mainstage multiple times as a long-term faculty member. He has also become an AmSAT-certified Alexander Technique teacher, helping performers and others regain mind-body coordination and ease of movement.

The Curtis Brothers Trio

Three musicians who have been playing together since childhood, all long-time Litchfield Jazz Camp faculty members:

How They Came to Litchfield

As preteens, Zaccai, Luques, and Richie formed a band they called Latin Flavor. Litchfield Performing Arts was deep into arts education at the time, and Ted Curtis, father of two of the band members and godfather to the rest of the little tribe, noticed LPA was offering a reimagined student Jazz Festival. Intrigued, he called and registered them.

It was a new kind of festival for public school bands. The adjudicators did far more than the customary listen, take notes, and hand out trophies. Some, like drummer Matt Wilson, jumped on stage to clinic kids on the spot. Reggie Workman, founder of The New School’s nascent jazz program and the festival’s head clinician, brought his little black book and selectively jotted names. When asked why he was interested in kids so young for his program, he replied: “Yeah, but they’ll be 18 one day and I want to know how to find them.”

By the end of the day, Latin Flavor had been named the outstanding band and tapped as the opening act for the professionals’ public concert. Scholarships to Litchfield Jazz Camp came with it. No trophies. They had earned something far more valuable. Flash forward many years of Jazz Camp and life, and Zaccai, Luques, and Richie are all today acclaimed professional musicians.