Preview: Chuck Lamb/Ria Curley Quartet at Jazz on Jay, Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025
Jazz on Jay wraps 2025 Thursday with arguably the most honored artist of this great season.
As the late, great jazz piano giant Dave Brubeck said in 2011, “Chuck (Lamb) is an extremely creative, harmonically interesting, rhythmically exciting pianist and one of the best improvisers I’ve heard in recent times!”
Ria Curley and Chuck Lamb at the piano. Photo provided
Thursday, Lamb leads a quartet with singer-pianist, music and life partner Ria Curley plus bassist Brad Monkell and drummer Sam Zucchini. They’ll play “mostly originals with perhaps a few standards mixed in,” as Lamb explains, specifying his original jazz and fusion instrumentals plus Curley’s “jazzy vocal r&b/pop/rock.”
For two decades, Lamb has played with Brubeck’s sons in the Brubeck Brothers Quartet: bassist and trombonist Chris Brubeck and drummer Dan Brubeck, and guitarist Mike DeMicco. The quartet has played festivals around the world, but its tours and handful of albums comprise just one chapter in Lamb’s creative journey.
His late-70s/early-80s jazz fusion band Dry Jack recorded two albums that Rolling Stone’s “History of Music” hailed as “one of the premier, cutting edge bands of the electric jazz movement.” His later albums include a tribute to Dave Brubeck and a collaboration with Jorge Gomez who recently performed with Lamb and Curley at Putnam Place in a Caffe Lena presentation.
As artist-in-residence, host and lead performer of the monthly “Jazz at Caffe Lena” series, he has hosted and performed with jazz notables including vibraphonist Joe Locke, saxophonists Chico Freeman, Dick Oatts and Cliff Lyons, and guitarist Vic Juris.
Meanwhile, Curley has earned renown as singer, songwriter, actor, dancer and visual artist who shows in New York galleries. She has toured in equity productions of “Godspell,” “Grease,” and “Roaring 20s Musical Review;” and she’s acted in TV dramas including “As The World Turns,” “Guiding Light,” and “Loving.” Credited as associate executive producer of the Grammy-nominated CD box set of Frank Sinatra’s Columbia recordings, she has also made two solo albums.
Their “Between the Shadows” instrumental appears in comic Hannah Einbinder’s HBO special “Everything Must Go” and three Lamb instrumentals appear in Dimitris Athiridis’s documentary film “Exergue on documenta 14.”
Chuck Lamb. Photo provided
In addition to national and international acclaim, Lamb and Curley have also been honored here at home.
They received an Artist Grant from Saratoga Arts in 2024. That same year, Lamb was honored as Jazz Artist of the Year at the Eddies Awards and Curley’s song “Wanna Be There” was nominated for Record of the Year.
Onstage, as Lamb explains, “Improvising is a big part of this music, and we plan to have at least one improvised solo on every song.”
The Chuck Lamb/Ria Curley Quartet perform Thursday as the 13th and last Jazz on Jay show for 2025.
Jazz on Jay free concerts are noon to 1:30 p.m. at Jay Square, the new park space opposite Schenectady City Hall. The rain site is Robb Alley at Proctors, 432 State St. Seating is provided indoors at Robb Alley, but patrons are invited to bring their own seating and refreshments to Jay Square.
Jazz on Jay is presented by the ElectriCity Arts and Entertainment District and sponsored by the New York State Council on the Arts, a Schenectady County Legislature Arts & Culture Grant, Downtown Schenectady Improvement Corporation, The Schenectady Foundation, Price Chopper/Market 32, MVP Health Care, Schenectady County, Schenectady City Hall, and Proctors Collaborative. This blog is a series media sponsor.
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