Meet singer-songwriter Ria Curley ’81.
When she was a little girl, every Sunday Maria (Ria) Curley ’81 would pile into the family car with her parents and five siblings for a ride. Once everyone was settled in, her family would break into song — usually, in multipart harmony. A family favorite: “New York, New York” from the Broadway musical On the Town. Little did Curley know that, one day, she’d be on stage in New York City, among other locales, singing and songwriting as a career.
Performing under the name Ria Curley today, the Saratoga Springs, N.Y., singer, songwriter, composer, and digital artist frequents clubs and concert halls around the country. Her music — smooth and sultry, with elements of jazz and R&B — incorporates message-oriented lyrics expressing her opinions on global issues like climate change and more emotional ones like navigating life as a teenager (inspired by her nieces and nephews). She explored this type of writing during the COVID-19 lockdown, when her stage performances were canceled and she had more downtime to contemplate current world issues. Curley has always been a philosophical thinker, she says, and issues of poverty, climate change, and justice had been brewing for years. “I wrote a ton of songs, and a lot of them came out being about getting along and what’s going on in the world.”
Becoming a professional singer-songwriter has been a lifelong journey for Curley. When she took piano lessons as a child (she wrote her first song at 12 and started performing publicly at 15), she laid the groundwork for a music career. Curley moved to New York City after graduating from Colgate, hoping to explore a career in the entertainment business. She auditioned for musical theater productions, earning roles in traveling shows like Godspell and Grease; appeared on soap operas; and sang with a rock gospel choir. All the while, she honed her talent for songwriting.
Several years later, Curley signed 22 of her songs to a publishing deal with Warner Chappell Music and, over time, has focused more on songwriting and recording. In 1999, she recorded the song “Take Me,” which gained the attention of Vaughn Harper, a DJ at New York City radio station WBLS. The airtime gained her notoriety among listeners, and the success of the sultry, romantic track led her to record a critically acclaimed album of the same name. More recently, in 2023, Curley released three new singles — “Wanna Be There,” “Two Note Samba,” and “Thank God For You” — which will be part of her upcoming EP Wanna Be There.
Though Curley has always made music a big part of her career, she has also used her philosophical mindset for other endeavors. The Colgate political science and Russian major entered law school at age 39, spurred by several attorneys for whom she worked part-time during her New York City days. When she was accepted to Georgetown University Law Center, they were impressed by her musical acumen. “They thought that, as a creative person with unique life experiences to share, I would be an asset in the class.”
After graduating from Georgetown in 2002, Curley worked as a personal law clerk for a judge on the New York State Court of Appeals and continued with litigation and appellate work for several years before going out on her own. Now, she says, music makes up about 75% of her work and, in the rest of her time, she works freelance for other lawyers, writing briefs, doing legal research, and when time permits, taking pro bono cases for low-income clients.
Blending these two parts of her life is integral to her happiness, Curley notes. For this reason, she’s enthusiastic about the Third-Century Plan’s focus on arts, creativity, and innovation. “I am so excited about the notion that we could encourage the sciences and mathematics and the arts to all be embraced and promoted together,” Curley says. “It would be a great world if we didn’t separate those and we had our mathematicians and lawyers and doctors and techies and everybody focusing on their own creativity, because I think that, when we’re creating, we’re our most authentic, best selves.”