from The Seattle Times:
Performing in perhaps the strongest field of bands in the history of the event, Garfield won the Essentially Ellington high-school jazz-band competition for an unprecedented fourth time Monday night at New York’s Lincoln Center.
Led by director Clarence Acox, the Garfield band played with trumpeter Wynton Marsalis in Alice Tully Hall with other top-placing bands (Foxborough High School, from Foxborough, Mass., and Dillard Center for the Arts, from Fort Lauderdale, Fla.) before the winning school was announced. Garfield also won Essentially Ellington last year, in 2004 and in 2003, making it the most successful and consistent band in the competition, considered the most prestigious of its kind. Bands from two other schools in the Seattle area, Roosevelt and Edmonds-Woodway high schools, also competed, but did not place among the top three.
Contest judges reported that they deliberated longer than they ever have and that the level of competition was never higher, said Edmonds-Woodway band director Jake Bergevin.
Continue reading at The Seattle Times.