Reprinted from the Spring 2020 OMEA Journal.
It is jazz festival season! All across Oregon, thousands of high school music students competing in jazz festivals in order to demonstrate their hard work, get feedback from knowledgeable judges, and ultimately dig deeper into this music. I judge many of these festivals. Recently I heard twenty-eight bands at a regional festival in my area. All of the bands played well, but by and large the handful of truly great performances I heard all had one…
Read more