Friends who hear about what Trist Curless is doing with his life often tell him, "It's so cool to see you living your dream."

Curless usually shakes his head and laughs a little bit at that.

"I usually say, ‘You're crazy,'" says Curless, who studied music education at the University of Northern Colorado in the early 1990s. "What I'm doing isn't something I ever dreamed of. There's no way in high school or college I would have even joked about doing what I'm doing right now."

For Curless, singing with the world-renown music group The Manhattan Transfer is beyond even his wildest dreams. A clinician at this year's UNC/Greeley Jazz Festival, Curless left UNC in 1995 when a friend called him and connected him to an opportunity to move to Seattle and start an acapella group called m-pact.

The chance to sing with The Manhattan Transfer came along much the same way - out of the blue. When Manhattan Transfer founding member Tim Hauser had back surgery a few years ago, the group contacted Curless to step in as Hauser's replacement during his recovery.

After Hauser died in October 2014, it seemed a natural fit to invite Curless back to be a permanent member of the 40-year-old group, known throughout the world for turning all genres of music into toe-tapping audience favorites. The 10-time Grammy Award-winning group has set the standard for other groups like it.

Curless now lives in Los Angeles and still performs with m-pact and is a sound engineer for a couple of other acapella groups. In an age where technology makes it possible for people with little musical talent to become performers, the raw talent of an acapella group is becoming more appreciated, Curless says.

"There something about hearing just voices, just the raw ability of the performers, that really connects with people," he says. "Because of that more and more acapella groups are becoming more popular and successful."

The importance of UNC

Curless attributes much of his success to UNC. A native of Cheyenne, Wyo., Curless attended a two-year college in Wyoming before transferring to UNC. The vocal music teacher who'd inspired him in high school to study music was by then a graduate student and teaching assistant at the university in Greeley.

Curless calls the UNC/Greeley Jazz Festival, now in its 46^th year and the largest event of its kind in the country, the "single most important event of my life." Curless attended the festival in high school and continued to be involved in it at UNC.

As a professional musician, he has been a clinician at the festival several times, and his group m-pact has twice been a guest artist at the festival.

Aside from the jazz festival, Curless credits UNC with preparing him for the career he's had in the music industry. He spent 10 years in Seattle with m-pact. Then the members decided to move to Los Angeles to pursue other jobs in the music industry as an additional income source. That's when Curless started doing sound engineering.

He's certainly taken a different path than his early days at UNC as a music education major.

"I wouldn't have the skill set to be doing what I'm doing without my experiences at UNC," Curless says. "If I'd become a music educator, I'm sure I would have liked that just as much. But as it turned out, my years of study there and the people I met led me to where I am."

Carrying on the tradition

Curless has been singing with The Manhattan Transfer for a year and a half, but sometimes he still has a hard time thinking of himself as a member of the group.

Part of that is due to group's history and longevity. Its members stayed pretty consistent over 40 years. Hauser, who founded the group in the early 1970s, was the visionary who came up with new ideas for albums and produced them.

The group might not have gone on without him after he died had Curless not stepped in previously when Hauser had surgery, Curless says. The other three members of the group have readily accepted Curless, as have audiences, some of whom weren't aware that Hauser had died.

"The audiences are still hearing the same music," Curless says. "The music still speaks to people. It's still Manhattan Transfer. Tim would not have wanted this group or its music to fall by the wayside."

Curless believes perhaps his experience with the group has shown that The Manhattan Transfer can keep going much longer than anyone might have anticipated. He points to m-pact, a group that has welcomed 25 new members over its 20-year history. Yet, when audiences hear the group perform, the music still sounds like m-pact.

"A group is more than just the individuals that make it up," Curless says. "It's about the energy, the songs, the versatility of the group itself."

The Manhattan Transfer does about 100 show dates per year, including international shows.

Curless says someday he'd like to perform with the group at the UNC/Greeley Jazz Festival.

"That would be the culmination of a lot of things for me," he says.