In May, 2025, the Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival (EE) will, as usual, convene in New York City’s Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC). This now decades old annual and prestigious educational musical event began because Wynton Marsalis wanted to help the music departments in our chronically underfunded public schools by sending their band directors free transcriptions from Duke Ellington’s catalogue.
When he was told that it wouldn’t work as there was then little interest in the music of Duke Ellington at that level, he proposed that they also develop a yearly contest with cash prizes, knowing that people are drawn to efforts to prove who is best, and cash always gets attention.
The idea has worked. The event started small, involving only schools around the city, but quickly grew both in the number of schools involved as well as the swing masters featured. May 2024 was its 29th season and hundreds of high schools and thousands of students, both here, Canada and in American schools overseas, were involved at various levels.
Now it is a yearly competition that is free to enter, with various cash prizes and open to all high schools in the United States and Canada.
But like the oft-referred-to iceberg, there is far more to it than the three-day long event that the public doesn’t see. I spoke to Mr. Todd Stoll, the Vice President of Education at JALC, and he was happy to give us a fuller picture of just what is involved.
The event is always a celebration of classic swinging big band jazz. To participate, any American or Canadian high school band director simply requests the Center’s six free transcribed arrangements for next year’s event and JALC sends them. JALC sends only the real transcriptions, not in any way simplified.
Stoll first noted that many high school music students know the works of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and other masters of Western classical music through years of playing their works. He added “We grew up in an era where a lot of the great jazz composers were languishing in obscurity. The great thing about the Essentially Ellington program is that we’ve brought these composers back.
“In addition to Ellington, we publish Basie, Mary Lou Williams, Fletcher Henderson, Chick Webb, Gerald Wilson, Benny Golson, Melba Liston, and some of the lesser-known composers. We are creating a library of the very best music for students and professional bands. So, now we hear this music played all over the world by professional bands, because of our library that we’ve made available.”
Stoll continued, “A big part of the competition festival is the publishing of the music. People see the big event here in New York, but they don’t realize that there are thousands and thousands of bands now all over the world playing the music. Also, we have a network of local festivals from New Jersey to California where bands can participate in a local festival and play this music.”
Periodically, the Center also sends the band directors a newsletter and gives them access to other helpful educational materials. Then the directors are invited to submit recordings of their bands performing for evaluation by EE staff members. Those submissions are considered applications to the competition, and the top 15 evaluated bands are invited to participate in the upcoming EE festival/competition. Then, those 15 bands each host various JALC or other associated musicians for a four-hour long clinic held whenever the school wants.
“The majority of our educational work is free for kids. Essentially Ellington is a free program. We don’t charge anybody for the workshops, the event, or for coming here. We actually fund some of the travel, especially the Title 1 schools, which are schools without a lot of resources. I mean, we’re a nonprofit. So, we’re a charity.
“Sending clinicians out just once became the model for our regional festivals. We’ll have nearly 30 festivals next year and every band that participates in those festivals will get a free workshop led by one of our prominent jazz musicians and educators. They are a combination of our Jazz at Lincoln Center musicians, people who teach for us, and successful band directors. So, in addition to the 15 finalist workshops we probably do another 300 to 350 clinics with school bands every year.”
EE is not only sending these important transcriptions to schools in over 60 countries, it is also looking to spread the example of a yearly top competition/festival. Currently, Australia has Essentially Ellington Down Under and feelers are out to see if the program can take root in Japan, Great Britain, South Africa, and possibly more countries. As of now, plans are developing to make the 30th anniversary EE next May an international event with five foreign schools invited to a special extended celebration.
It promises to be a grand 30th anniversary celebration and well worth watching, either in person or at home at JALC’s YouTube channel.
