When we were Young, IHS Jazz at Clark College 1998: Notes from the Teaching Field

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2010
During my years teaching high school band and International Baccalaureate music at Interlake High School in Bellevue, Washington (many years ago now), we had some fantastic groups (for example, I've previously discussed our residency with composer Maria Schneider-May 2010). Now that I'm converting some of my old VHS tapes into digital, I'm going through many old videos of all of the groups I taught at Interlake and getting to see again and remember how much talent were in those groups. It is bringing back some great memories for me so I'll be sharing some of those performances with you and you can see and hear for yourself (including some time in 2011, our aforementioned legendary concert with Maria Schneider).

First I have three videos from January 30, 1998 in which the Interlake High School Jazz Ensemble won first place in the AA division at the Clark College Jazz Festival in Vancouver, WA. This was a great festival for it featured many of the great high school programs in Washington and Oregon (including the much bejeweled Garfield and Roosevelt High School Jazz Bands, although not in our division since they were AAAA schools owing to their larger populations). We performed two compositions for the preliminary competition during the afternoon ("Wyrgly" by Maria Schneider and "After the Rain" by John Coltrane and arranged by me) and when selected as one of three bands for the evening competition, we performed "Wyrgly" again along with "Fingers" by Thad Jones. So here are the Finals performances, enjoy! (you can view the prelims on my Youtube channel)

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 4:28 PM