Lafayette to host Rockwood schools in annual Jazz Festival concert
At last year’s Jazz Festival, Lafayette High School’s Jazz Ensemble performs in the Theater. Rockwood Valley Middle School and Genesis Jazz Project played in the concert as well. This year, Rockwood Valley Middle School, Eureka and Rockwood Summit will participate in the concert.
On Thursday Jan. 18, Lafayette will host other Rockwood schools in the Theater at 7 p.m. for its Jazz Festival concert.
Director of Bands Brad Balog developed the idea for the festival several years ago.
“It’s not like a competitive jazz festival, it’s just more of a celebration like a night concert celebration of jazz,” Balog said.
In previous years, the festival involved local bands of varying levels coming to perform.
“I started off with some of our middle school bands coming to perform, and then we’d perform and then we’d get a collegiate or a professional group from the community in to play,” Balog said.
For the past two years, Lafayette performed with Rockwood Valley Middle School and Genesis Jazz Project. However, this year it’s doing something different because Lafayette recently performed with Genesis Jazz Project in a Thanksgiving concert for Circle of Concern.
This year, Rockwood Valley will still perform, and all high schools were invited to come. While Marquette is unable to attend, Eureka and Rockwood Summit will bring their jazz bands.
“The idea of showcasing what we’ve been working on for the jazz bands of Eureka, Rockwood Summit and Rockwood Valley is very exciting,” senior and trombone-player Drew Leslie said. “We’ve been working extra hard to make sure that we can show off the best side of our program for the rest of the district.”
Lafayette’s Jazz Band prepared throughout the school year to give good performance.
“Since the first day of school, we met for zero hour every day Tuesday through Friday constantly working on various Jazz Charts,” senior and Lead Trumpet Jacob Wieher said. “We work every day to perfect these charts and display the ones we feel best show our diversity and skill level as a band.”
The performance isn’t just for Lafayette’s Jazz Band to show its skill, but for the other Rockwood schools to show their skills too.
“I’m very excited to show off a bit for our peers and especially to see what sort of work Eureka and Summit have been putting into their performances,” Leslie said.
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