On Thursday, March 7th, the North Hunterdon High School Jazz Ensemble participated in the preliminary round of the New Jersey Association for Jazz Education (NJAJE) State Jazz Festival, at Steinert High School. The band earned a Gold rating in the sight-reading category and a Silver rating overall, which was high enough to be one of nine bands moving on to the NJAJE Group II Finals, which will be held on Saturday, April 27th, at Princeton High School.
This is the first time in school history that the Jazz Ensemble has attended this prestigious festival. According to director Mr. Greg Boccuti, “To make finals in our first year attending the festival is an unbelievable honor for our students, our music department, and our school community. The jazz ensemble is our highest-level auditioned instrumental group, and these students are the epitome of hard work and dedication. I am proud and humbled to be their director on a daily basis, and I am beyond overjoyed that their excellence is being recognized on the state level. Simply put, this is one of the highest achievements a group like this can obtain.”
The NJAJE State Jazz Festival is a yearly state-wide jazz festival competition sponsored by our state’s jazz education organization and occurs in two phases:
- A preliminary round of all participating ensembles, regardless of school size, is held at five locations on consecutive nights and adjudicated by the same three professionals. Sight-reading is required and is scored as 15% of the total score in the preliminary round. Improvisation is also required as part of the sight-reading chart, and is one of the new components of the sight-reading adjudication sheet.
- A final round is held at three locations; each of the top nine scoring bands from the preliminary round is grouped by school enrollment size. Sight-reading and improvisation are required and are identical to the preliminary round.
The North Hunterdon High School Jazz Ensemble will continue their festival season in early April with the getjazzed@berks Scholastic Festival, which is part of Berks Jazz Fest in Reading, Pennsylvania. The band will finish the school year with performances at the Neshaminy JazzFest in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, the North Hunterdon High School Spring Concert #2, and the 3rd annual Jazz in the Park picnic at Finn Park in Union, New Jersey.
Students in the Jazz Ensemble are: Kayla Blazovic, Miles Burns, Kevin Carreira, Krish Chandel, Amelia Chapman, Ryan Cowell, Cullen Elliott, Joshua Evans, Lily Fasciano, Casey Frasca, Nathan Gallaway, Matthew Harris, Lucas Holbrook, Mackenzie Holk, Zoe Jenkins-Hiscox, Stephen Kotran, Charlie Lisa, Jamison Morrow, Patrick Palma, and Ryan Smyth.
