T. Howard Curtis III has been enjoying a multifaceted career as a jazz drummer, multiple percussionist and educator for over 25 years. He has performed at the Hampton, Charleston, Hilton Head, Monterey, Atlanta, La Villette (Paris, France) and North Sea (Netherlands) Jazz Festivals, the (Washington) D.C. Free Jazz Festival, and the Konsberg Arts Festival (Norway) and has toured Europe five times, including performances in Germany, England, Poland, Austria, Russia and Switzerland. American venues include a number of universities; New York City’s Blue Note, The Knitting Factory, The Jazz Standard and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Smithsonian Institution and Blues Alley; and Los Angeles’ Getty Museum. Curtis has performed and/or recorded with John Abercrombie, David “Fathead” Newman, Andrew White, Billy Harper, Eartha Kitt, Rosemary Clooney, Lionel Hampton, Gary Thomas, Johnny Coles, David Liebman (his record “Joy” receiving 4 1/2 stars in Down Beat magazine), Amiri Baraka, the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra, John D’earth, René Marie (Grammy-nominated short video), Mark Murphy, Jon Faddis, Ingrid Jensen, Jimmy Heath, Clark Terry, Jimmy Bruno, Frank Foster, Valery Ponomarev, Lonnie Liston Smith, Kurt Rosenwinkle, Mulgrew Miller, Kurt Elling, Barry Harris, George Coleman, Marc Johnson, Oliver Lake, Odean Pope, Julius Hemphill, James Carter, Kenny Rankin, Ellis Marsalis, Marc Copeland, Rick Margitza, Bob Mintzer, Bill Evans, Joe Locke, Jerry Bergonzi, Michelle Rosewoman, Carl Fontaine, Tommy Newsome, Jon Hendricks, Michael Formanek and Greg Osby. Pop gigs include freelance work with The Temptations, The Platters, Billy Davis, The Main Ingredient, Bob Hope, Solomon Burke, Tom Browne, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Red Skelton, Melba Moore, The Impressions, Barbara Mandrell and Regis Philbin. As an educator, Curtis has had a broad working relationship on each level of scholastic instrumental music. After initially working as a substitute teacher for each grade level, he became a first-call substitute teacher for all of Virginia’s District VIII music teachers. He served for six years as an associate band director and percussion specialist at Denbigh High School and has been percussion instructor/music history instructor for the Summer Institute for the Arts in Newport News, Va. since 1991. He has adjudicated middle and high school-level music festivals; been featured at the International Association for Jazz Education and the Percussion Arts Society Conferences; toured England and Wales as a clinician, teacher and performer; taught jazz drums at the Swiss Jazz School in Basel, Switzerland; and contributed to Rudimental Percussionist magazine as a columnist. He currently serves as an adjunct professor of music at the College of William and Mary, The University of Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth University, as well as at the Peabody Institute of Music at the John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., where he teaches applied drum set, directs a jazz percussion ensemble and lectures on jazz history and rhythmic analysis. Curtis also tours with VCU’s Mary Morton Parsons Jazz Masters, a faculty ensemble that presents solo and group sessions at schools throughout Richmond and beyond to acquaint children with jazz (funded by a permanent endowment donated by patrons of jazz through a challenge grant from The Mary Morton Parsons Foundation). Curtis has published three books: "A Practical Guide to Flamboyancy", "Rudimental Studies for the Snare/Volume I", and "Rudimental Studies for the Snare/Volume II", plus several arrangements for jazz percussion ensemble including John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” in four movements. Works in progress include a book collection of 150 transcribed jazz vibraphone solos and a music history book chronicling the African American as field musician in the Civil and Revolutionary Wars. He has produced and performed a percussion soundtrack for the film documentary “Scenes for A Princess.” These projects are produced through his company, Percussion Discussion, Inc.
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