Long Artist Bio

For more than two decades, trumpeter and composer Ted Chubb has built a life in jazz as a bandleader, educator, community builder, and artistic director in Jersey City. He leads his own ensembles, teaches jazz trumpet at Princeton University, and co-owns and helms The Statuary in his chosen hometown.

“Ted Chubb is a very talented trumpeter, composer, improviser, bandleader and educator,” says bassist, composer, and 11-time Grammy Award winner Christian McBride. “Ted is the total package, and most of all, he is just one great guy.”

Chubb’s playing is grounded in melody, bebop, and blues phrasing. He draws from the trumpet lineage of Miles Davis, Booker Little, Lee Morgan, Dizzy Gillespie, Blue Mitchell, Freddie Hubbard, Kenny Dorham, and Art Farmer, alongside modern voices such as Tom Harrell and Nicholas Payton. He has also cited vocalists including Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan as formative influences. 

“Everything I play, I want to have the blues in it — and I believe that jazz is a language and should be taught more similarly to an actual spoken language,” he has said. “There is improvised vocabulary and repertoire that you have to know to be able to communicate with other musicians in a logical and meaningful way.”

Born in Ashtabula, Ohio, Chubb grew up in a musical household; his mother was a cellist, pianist, and soprano vocalist. As a young child, family gatherings centered around the piano. He sang in church choirs, studied Suzuki violin briefly, and took piano lessons before choosing the trumpet. “When I was 10, the band instruments were demonstrated at school and it was never a question of if I was going to play, only which one,” he recalls. “For some reason the trumpet just felt like my voice. Once I began playing, it felt a part of me.”

Discovering Miles Davis’s ’Round About Midnight and Lee Morgan with Art Blakey on A Night in Tunisia changed his trajectory. “Music was always something that was natural to me but not something I put a lot of emphasis on until I found jazz,” he says. “It was a sound that, as a kid growing up in a small town in Ohio, I had no idea existed. I was completely enthralled with it from the moment I heard those records.”

While studying at Ohio State University, Chubb worked professionally in Latin bands, soul bands, big bands, avant-garde ensembles, jam bands, and small jazz groups. He apprenticed with saxophonist Gene Walker and organist Bobby Floyd, playing weekly in a Hammond B3–centered church band. Those years deepened his relationship to blues language, groove, and audience connection.

In 2003, Chubb moved to New Jersey to study with trumpet pedagogue William B. Fielder at Rutgers University, earning his Master of Music degree. Fielder’s focus on breath, tone, and lineage sharpened his technical foundation. The phrase “Gratified Never Satisfied,” taught to him by Fielder, became a guiding principle and later the title of his 2017 release. Chubb has also cited Dennis Reynolds, Pharez Whitted, and Derrick Gardner as early mentors. “Without them,” he has said, “I am not sure I would still be playing today.”

He found a musical home at Cecil’s, the Newark club run by drummer Cecil Brooks III, in an environment where, as he puts it, “you never knew who might walk in the door… This is where I met most of the musicians I am associated with still to this day.”

As a performer, Chubb has worked as both bandleader and sideman with artists including Winard Harper, Christian McBride, Wallace Roney, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Billy Hart, Antonio Hart, Houston Person, George Coleman, and Charenee Wade. He was a member of Wallace Roney’s Orchestra and first connected with Harper through the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead program at the Kennedy Center in 2006, later working regularly in Harper’s band. He has appeared at venues including Smalls and Jazz at Lincoln Center, and at festivals across North America, South America, Europe, and the Middle East.

From 2006 to 2011, Chubb toured with the Tony Award–winning Broadway production Jersey Boys, performing more than 1,500 shows and appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. “I really learned what it meant to be a working trumpet player,” he has said. “No matter how you felt that day you had to produce. There were a thousand people in the audience who didn’t care how you felt — they just wanted to have a good time — so you had to do your job.”

Chubb first gained recognition as co-leader, with saxophonist Mike Lee of New Tricks, a chordless quartet featuring trumpet, tenor saxophone, bass, and drums, which released New Tricks (2009) and Alternate Side (2011). He later released Gratified Never Satisfied (2017), reflecting the guiding philosophy he absorbed from William B. Fielder. “As a trumpet player we always have to be bandleaders,” he has said. “I have been leading gigs since I was 16.” In addition to his quintet work, he leads a trio and quartet devoted to the Great American Songbook, ballads, bossa novas, and blues.

Between 2015 and 2018, Chubb lived in Switzerland and traveled extensively across Europe and beyond. “I love to hear as much music as possible,” he has said, “not always even the most professional music but the folk music of the country, where regular folks are expressing themselves. I am not so interested in perfection but rather emotion and connecting with people.”

From 2012 to 2020, Chubb served as Director of Music at Jazz House Kids in Montclair, New Jersey, and from 2020 to 2024 as Vice President of Jazz Education & Associate Producer. He oversaw a staff of 20, led a faculty of approximately 100 musicians and served thousands of students and families annually, developing cutting edge jazz education programming, corporate and non-profit partnerships, and leading tours, master classes, and cultural exchanges from Peru to Bahrain. He remains active with Jazz House Kids in a curatorial and advisory capacity, most recently as Artistic Advisor to “The Max Roach Music Project” a 10 week curriculum for NYC DOE schools centered on justicing music through the work of Max Roach.

Chubb serves on the artistic leadership team of the Montclair Jazz Festival, curates “Jazz at One” at St. Paul’s Chapel in collaboration with Trinity Church and Jazz House Kids, and sits on the advisory board of the Jersey City Jazz Festival.

In 2020, Chubb and his wife, Rachel Ryll, purchased The Statuary in Jersey City, a 1907 brick industrial building. After renovations, they reopened concerts to the public in 2021. Since then, the venue has presented more than fifty concerts and community events, operating on a suggested-donation model designed to remove financial barriers and bring world-class jazz directly into the neighborhood — often introducing the music to local listeners encountering it for the first time.

In May 2026, Chubb will release Live at The Statuary on Circle 9 Records, documenting his longstanding quintet with Bruce Williams, Oscar Perez, Tom DiCarlo, and Jerome Jennings. Recorded over three nights in March 2025, the album captures a spectacular performance inside the space he helped create.  

“I needed to record and put my music first — but most importantly, I am trying to connect with and develop relationships through music both in our local communities and the wider globe,” Chubb has said. “In a time where so much of the world is trying to divide us, I believe this is of the highest importance.”