from The Seattle Times:
For the second consecutive year, Seattle high schools claimed the top-two spots at this weekend’s Essentially Ellington Festival in New York, the nation’s premier high-school jazz-band contest.
Seattle’s Garfield High School placed first and Roosevelt High School was second. The 1-2 order was reversed last year, with Roosevelt on top.
Garfield’s victory was its third, tying a record that Roosevelt set in 2008 and furthering the Seattle schools’ dominance at Ellington. West Coast schools began going to Ellington in 1999. Roosevelt and Garfield have each won three times since then; no other school has won twice.
“It’s very exciting,” said Clarence Acox, the longtime band director at Garfield. “No matter how many times it happens, it never loses its luster and we are very thrilled to be here.”
Acox was talking about simply being in the top three, which was the extent of what he knew when reached late Sunday in New York. On Sunday afternoon, Essentially Ellington-presenter Jazz at Lincoln Center invited the top-three bands — based on judging of their performances earlier in the weekend — to take the stage with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. Joining Garfield and Roosevelt in the festival-closing concert at Avery Fisher Hall was Eau Claire Memorial High School, from Eau Claire, Wis., which finished third. New World School of the Arts, a prior Ellington champion from Miami, was named honorable mention.
Bellevue’s Newport High School also was among the 15 schools in the Ellington finals. At least three Washington state schools have been invited to the Ellington finals every year since the contest was opened to schools in the West 11 years ago.
Roosevelt High School’s Ellington record is right at the top, with 10 trips to the Ellington finals out of a possible 11, and three wins. Those statistics now are matched by Garfield (or bettered; Garfield’s current finals streak is eight years).
Two-time defending champion Roosevelt was going for the one record that Garfield doesn’t have: three consecutive victories.
But Scott Brown, director at Roosevelt, also reached when he knew only that his band had finished in the top three, said his band wasn’t feeling any pressure. Commenting just before the Sunday-night concert, he noted that the winner already was decided. “Tonight is just playing for the enjoyment of it — as we do all the time.”
With one bonus: “We get to play with Wynton!”
Continue reading at The Seattle Times.