The lights dimmed, and the din of the excited parents, friends and students filling the auditorium hushed. The spotlight was on Jazz I, which started off the Mid-Winter Jazz Concert on Feb. 4. As soon as Mr. Chris Harmon, Music, finished introducing the event, the music began.
“It’s fun having everybody come out to support me; it’s just a good overall experience to play in front of people. There were no big glitches, and all the solos went well,” Connor Fox (10) said.
The emotion of the band carried into the audience as they performed the selections they had been working on.
“The best thing about playing was getting to showcase what we’ve been working on. I did pretty well. There were mistakes here and there, but in music there’s always room for improvement,” Zachary Hansen (11) said.
Differing from traditional symphonic band instrumentation, jazz band included mostly percussion and brass with the addition of the woodwind sound coming from the saxophones. The songs were blues, jazz and rock inspired with improvisation solos scattered throughout the pieces.
“Jazz is exciting. The other stuff is very rigid where ‘this is the way it’s done and there’s no other way.’ With jazz, if you make a mistake, you can still sound good. I chose it for the music style,” Hansen said.
