Students, teachers and parents attended the annual “An Evening of Jazz” concert by students in jazz band from the upper and middle schools, on Friday at the Blackford campus.

The concert, now in its 10th year at the upper school, included pieces such as “Mis Abuelos,” “Indian Summer,” “Point of No Return” and “Tip Toe.”

The concert initially featured all groups that were part of the conservatory, including Downbeat as well as the lower school jazz band, but because due to such a large undertaking and the increasing size of the department, it was eventually switched to just a jazz concert with performances by the upper school Jazz Band and Lab Band and the middle school jazz band.

Christopher Florio, upper school orchestra director, felt that though there was a tighter time gap for the musicians to prepare, they have practiced a lot for the past two months.

“One change is that there’s actually going to be an exciting bass feature; we have, between the middle and upper school, five really strong jazz bassists,” Florio said. “They’re actually going to do a feature tune medley together that our bass teacher worked out, and that’s going to be really exciting.”

For every rehearsal, Florio goes through all of the pieces with the musicians until they sound nearly perfect. As a sophomore who recently joined the Jazz Band, though moving up to Jazz Band from Lab Band brought a lot of excitement, Satchi Thockchom (10) felt that there were still challenges in some of the pieces they’re playing.

“I’m excited that I’m in jazz band now because they’re the main act, so we get to play a lot of songs; we open and close the show which is exciting,” Satchi said. “[Two] of the songs [are] pretty hard: one of them, I speed up a lot and the other one has a lot of setups which are difficult.”

Andrew Rule (11), who plays the trombone in Jazz Band, described the process of how the groups practice in addition to class time.

“Jazz band is divided up into sections: we have the trombone section, the trumpet section, saxophone section, so everybody has to meet individually in their sections over the weekends,” he said. “So really, even though we have the same amount of class time as any other class, we really have twice as much time to prepare.”

For many of the seniors performing, this concert will be one of the last of their high school career. John Nicolas Jerney is a senior who plays the saxophone in the Jazz Band.

“It’s our last big performance of the year, I mean I’ve been performing these concerts for a long time so it just kind of feels like any other one,” John Nicolas said. “But I know that [this] being the last one, it’s kind of a little bit special.”

John Nicolas has also been part of the jazz bands since freshmen year.

“We are performing a lot more songs than we usually do, almost twice as much,” John Nicolas said. “We had a little bit less time than we usually do to prepare and then a lot more songs, so we just had to work a lot harder so that was our biggest thing. I just like actually playing each song; some of them are just really fun to play, and when they end up sounding good, that’s a nice feeling.”

The upper and middle school orchestras will leave for Sonoma on Mar. 22, and the spring musical concert featuring students from all three campuses will be held on April 8.

This piece was originally published in the pages of The Winged Post on March 23, 2016.