Jazz Bands

This was a Jazz Festival held at Montgomery County R-II School.  There were 14 High School and Middle School Bands.  The bands were divided into two classes.  I am not real sure of how the classes were determined.  It looks like Junior High and small HS bands in one class and then everyone else.  The program does not list bands by class.  I remember that we traveled to several Jazz Festivals over the period of two years when I was in the band.  Montgomery was always a destination.  I can’t be sure, but I think we also traveled to Drury College Jazz Festival in Springfield, MO.  Not sure of the outcome there. 

As the first-place band in the AA Class at Montgomery, we were invited to play for the evening concert featuring the Montgomery R-II Symphonic Jazz Band and Wright City.  The guest soloist Phil Wilson, trombone, and Leonard Cuddy, drums, played with us as soloist.  I am sure we were only allowed to play a couple of pieces; I am not sure which charts we programed that evening.

As a music educator I look back on this program and realize how fortunate we were as high school musicians to play the music of Count Basie and other great swing charts.  In 1973 the music available for high school bands consisted of a lot of arrangements of pop tunes and novelty compositions/arrangements, some good and many not so good.  Jerry Arana, Band Director, had a strong background in jazz and had us play great music!  To this day I am grateful for the exposure I had to great swing charts early in my education.  It has helped me throughout my career as a band director.  Jerry also exposed us to the great professional bands that were touring during this time.  We listened to recordings and attended great live performances.  Again, that exposure helped us understand the concepts of jazz and swing music.  We were able to apply that to our performances.  I’m not sure I completely understood how valuable all of this was until I enrolled in college and realized that I had a foundation for playing jazz and swing that set me up for success as a future band director.  But more importantly it made all of us appreciate and learn to love this genre of music