PIANO

Zaccai Curtis is an acclaimed pianist, recording artist, producer and author. In 2025, he was honored with the Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz Album, Cubop Lives! He leads his own groups, the Zaccai Curtis Quintet and Sonido Solar. After five successful releases, his sixth, Sonoluminescence, is set to drop in 2026. Together with his brother bassist Luques Curtis, Zaccai founded the record label TRRcollective, a collaborative space for musicians to produce and release their own music. He is also proud to have produced the Grammy-nominated album Entre Colegas by Andy González (2016).

Zaccai has performed with renowned artists Christian Scott, Donald Harrison, Cindy Blackman Santana, Eddie Palmieri, Lakecia Benjamin, Brian Lynch, the Mambo Legends, Avery Sharpe and many others.  A respected educator, he serves on the faculty of University of Hartford’s Jackie McLean Jazz Studies Division  and teaches each summer at Litchfield Jazz Camp where he began as a student at age 14  He has two instructional books to his credit, Art of the Guajeo and Theory of the Common Voicing, which support students in their jazz and Latin jazz studies (available at zaccaicurtis.com).

A three-time ASCAP Young Jazz Composer Award winner, Zaccai is a prolific composer and arranger for his own groups, as well as artists like Little Johnny Rivero, Steve Kroon, and Waitiki 7.  His quartet, chosen twice by the U.S. State Department for the American Music Abroad (Jazz Ambassadors) program, toured South Asia in 2006. In 2007, he received the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism’s Artist Fellowship for original composition and the Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works grant. In 2020, DownBeat Critics Poll named Zaccai the top Rising Star pianist.