The festival featured Fair Grove’s Swingin Eagles; the Eagles had success at this competition receiving a score of one.
At the Parkview Jazz Festival, the Swingin Eagles finished fifth place overall out of 15 schools. Losing only to North County, Kickapoo, Ozark, and Willard.
The scoring at band events is on a scale of one to five with one being the best. The score is averaged between three judges that are placed throughout an auditorium, they are placed in different places because one band can sound completely different depending on where a person is located in an auditorium.
The competitive jazz band rehearses on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school. Natalie Palomo is the director of all of the bands at Fair Grove. She said, “We rehearse twice a week for 1-2 hours depending on the pep band schedule that week. We also bring in clinicians to work with the group on small details from a ‘judge’s perspective,’ and focus on performing at a higher level.”
Jazz band is a big commitment for the students that participate, according to Lee Van Cleave (10). Only rehearsing for a few hours a week the students must practice to make sure they know the music before rehearsal.
The day of competition can be hectic for a competitor, Collin Emery (10) suggested. “We get to the venue and go to a practice room to warm up and tune. We run some of the tricky stuff and then go wait backstage till the jazz band before us is finished then we go on stage and perform,” Emery voiced.
Each jazz song that our competitive jazz band performs features two to four solos. Palomo explained, “…Most of my competitive jazz group is also in our jazz combo, which is a small group focused on learning to improvise solos…trust that they’ll work on them to make them something they can be proud of.”
Palomo said that it can be difficult music for jazz bands because she wants to choose contrasting music that will test and show the strengths of the musicians. The band performed a swing piece, a ballad, and a Latin piece this year.
The jazz band will compete again in March at Drury University, Van Cleave announced.
The jazz band was successful at this competition according to Palomo, Emery, and Van Cleave. Palomo has high hopes for the rest of the season.
