Congratulations go out to Roosevelt High School's jazz band for once again making the finals of Jazz at Lincoln Center's Essentially Ellington Festival. The jazz band under the longtime leadership of Scott Brown has accomplished this feat a lot in the last couple decades, but this year presented a whole new set of challenges.
Playing in a band largely comprised by wind instruments means tons of wind blowing all of the spit particles everywhere - jazz bands are kinda gross, huh? They're not actually gross, we just have a new framework for seeing things thanks to our enemy, COVID-19.
There's been no way for kids to get together in the last 13 months to play as a band but that hasn't stopped the team from still working through it. This year's submission to the festival required the kids to record their parts at home before submitting to be mixed together as an ensemble.
The Seattle Times reports: "Through the magic of digital audio, individual tracks were overlaid, starting with the rhythm section, which did play together in person, in a safe, socially distanced setting, said Brown. Over the next three weeks, the saxophone, trumpet, trombone parts and solos were added and mixed with the help of an engineer who specializes in such work. Because of the challenge of recording during the pandemic, only one audition tune, Duke Ellington’s 'Old King Dooji,' was required, rather than the usual three."
The contest takes places online June 4-5th, 2021. Here's what this year's crop of kids are missing out on by not getting to play live - enjoy footage from 2019's 1st place performance by Roosevelt High School: