I’ve attended the Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival many times both in the audience and from backstage, and always enjoyed the experiences. When I first learned of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington, I was pleased but uninterested in attending. My love of jazz began with the big bands, but my career was that of a public high school teacher in schools that often had dropped or lacked adequately funded music departments. So, I was usually under-whelmed by their efforts.
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra was another matter entirely. It was headed by Wynton Marsalis and originally filled with many of Duke Ellington’s surviving sidemen and other top big band veterans. When I learned that they would play Essentially Ellington’s second set, I got tickets. I’d endure the first set and enjoy the second.
It was a revelation and complete reevaluation. These teens are always good, at least. One year as Portland Oregon’s The American Music Program band set up to perform Ellington’s “The Tattooed Bride,” someone close by said, “They’ve turned their music stands.” They had memorized the entire extended work and sounded great. Ellington scholar, composer and that year an Essentially Ellington judge David Berger compared the work to a symphony by Brahms and noted that even Duke’s men read the difficult score when playing it. Since then, many of the competing bands always play from memory.
Watching the teens when they weren’t playing was also a pleasant surprise. At those times, they comprised much of the audience, and rather than try to unsettle their rivals with negative behavior as any hometown sports team might do to their rivals, they always cheered them about as much as they cheered their own. I’ve even seen a few get up and dance in the isles.
When the nearby Newark Academy band made the competition, I saw an opportunity. Julius Tolentino is the school’s jazz director. He agreed to let me tag along as an observer as the students participated in the three days of the festival. Over the years, several of his bands made it to the event, and I was often backstage with them.
The event takes place in the spacious campus of Jazz at Lincoln Center, located high in a skyscraper in New York City across the street from Central Park. The high schoolers come from all over the country; for almost all of them it’s their first visit to what has long been the Mecca of jazz—what Lester Young dubbed “The Big Apple”.
At one festival, a parent said that when her daughter’s band had left their high school for the airport it was on a lonely predawn bus ride. Only a few family members and friends were there to wish them well. Her older son, a former high school football star said if the school’s football team were leaving for some similar competition, not only would the school’s administration be there to cheer them on, but so would the mayor and town council, as well as a large crowd.
The good people of Jazz at Lincoln Center try to make up for such snubs. When the high schoolers first get off their elevator at Essentially Ellington, they must walk a long gauntlet called the Cheer Tunnel. It is composed of staff, volunteers, friends and family members surrounding them and applauding, cheering and wishing them well. Here their musical talents, developed over their years of study and persistent effort, are valued and appreciated.
The teens are quickly moved into the grand Rose Hall for a 90-minute Q&A and open rehearsal by Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. When all the bands are seated, they compose an assembly of high school students unlike any I ever saw in my decades-long teaching career. In a normal high school assembly, some teens are board, distracted and clearly not involved in the unfolding program. Each time at Essentially Ellington, I saw hundreds of teen musicians all sitting in rapt attention to everything presented to them, and talking about it afterwards.
Mostly it was a Q&A with any student free to question Marsalis or any other orchestra member. The famed bandleader, and every one of his musicians, always treated the questions seriously, with never a hint of condescension. Intrigued, I once asked a staff member if any of the visiting teens had caused a discipline problem. He said that once one teen had been sent home early after being caught smoking in his hotel room.
Next, the teens were separated into masterclasses according to their instruments for a number of workshops with Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra members. These are common during the festival’s three days. It helps promote a feeling that no matter where they are from, they are all musicians and share a love of what and how they play. It reminded me that once in a conversation with guitarist Russell Malone I said I was surprised that so often musicians traveling overseas, would play a gig with some unknown local talents and invite them to stay with them if they ever visited in the US—even though they really know nothing else about them. “We have to,” Malone explained, “because we are the only ones that we have.”
During some free time that day, some finalists wandered about Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 100,000-square-foot facility, because there is plenty to see. The extensive Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame honors many past jazz heroes. The three performance spaces—Rose Theater, The Appel Room, and Dizzy’s Club. All were designed specifically as premier jazz venues, and are noted for their sonic clarity. Both the Appel Room and Dizzy’s Club, and the extensive atrium nearby sport a spectacular glass wall that runs virtually floor to ceiling and offers a wonderful and ever-changing view of the neighboring Central Park and the city skyline.
During Essentially Ellington’s 20th anniversary festival, an impressive hall display also listed every school and every student musician who had participated in all of its festivals. Among them were a number of musicians who have developed successful jazz careers, such as saxophonists Alexis Tarantino, and Erica von Kleist, pianists Aaron Diehl, and Isaiah Thompson, as well as Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s own bassist Carlos Henriquez, trombonist Chris Crenshaw, and drummer Obed Calvaire. As two students studied it, I heard one quietly say, “Next time, our names will be here.”
The first evening always features a special celebratory dinner in the Appel Room and again seating is not by school, but by instruments. Each table features a special guest—either a Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra member, one of the competition’s distinguished judges or a clinician. They are there primarily to help the students get to know each other by fostering conversations. An extended student jam session follows the dinner, and if their enthusiasm level is still strong, they may attend Dizzy Club’s late-night session without paying the entrance fee. (A deal good for all festival nights.)
The real competition begins on the second day and concludes on the early afternoon of the third. Students are free to explore New York the evening of the second day. All not performing are expected to be in the audience until all bands have finished on stage. As Tolentino’s students waited their turn to go on one year, both Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s saxophonist Ted Nash and trumpeter Kenny Rampton gave them last minute pointers. The two had both been their clinicians and clearly felt a connection to the band.
When it was the Newark Academy’s turn, an Essentially Ellington staff member gave them a brief pep talk concluding with, “Where are you at?” “The House of Swing!” the students cried. “What are you going to do?” he barked. “Swing!” He smiled, and led them down the hall to wait just offstage for their big moment.
A TV monitor showed their rivals finishing their performance just beyond a dark soundproof door. As that band finished and the hall filled with applause, the staff member told the Newark Academy musicians that in a few seconds that rival band would come offstage right past them. Those teens, he said, deserved as much recognition as they did for all of their hard work. The door slid open, their rivals emerged, and the Academy students cheered and applauded them as they passed—because, as Russell Malone had said, they were the only ones that their rivals really have.
Then the band moved into a semi-dark area offstage and waited. None spoke, and all appeared calm, but two quietly kept time to music only they could hear. On cue, they quickly moved into position on the great stage. The audience, composed mostly of their competitors and strangers applauded their arrival heartily. “No one has a better chance than you.” that staff member had told them. Their proud band director smiled approvingly and gave them the downbeat.
That was the pattern followed until all had performed. Then the judges deliberated and selected the final three competitors. That competition occurs in the final evening and is followed by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s performing as the judges again decide. The festival finally concludes with the Awards Ceremony.
Under Julius Tolentino’s guidance, the Newark Academy’s band has made it to Essentially Ellington several times, winning some prizes, but never taking top prize. Last year they failed to make the final 15, a blow Tolentino described as devastating for them. “But it only took a minute for them to say, what’s it going to take to get back,” he later wrote. This year they returned with perhaps the most significant piece in Duke’s vast discography, “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue.” Their stellar performance won a number of individual awards as well as the coveted $5,000 top prize.
