Festival: Bringing People Together

I probably shouldn't write posts when I'm all wound up but here we go. While being away from home has been tricky it hasn’t been too hard.  Mostly it’s just adjusting to my new life and struggling through school.  But there are things that have been a challenge.  Mainly watching as someone else does my job at home. In case you couldn't tell I LOVEd my job and LOVE my students.

It was hard in October when I first  watched a video on facebook of my students performing at Jazz Symposium at the new Lynnwood High School.  Then I saw videos of them singing our famous Christmas carol gigs. Then in the last two weeks a few of my kids decided to take themselves [parents drove] to Lionel Hampton and do solos.  And they got honorable mention!

Now it’s festival week.  It started out as the Soundsation Jazz Festival then it was the Lynnwood Jazz Festival and now it’s the Friends of Frank DeMiero Jazz Festival but it’s still my festival- I could go on and on but I'll try to give you an overview.

I first went in 1994 as a freshman jazz choir drummer and the guest artist was Jon Hendricks! [I should track down pictures of that.] Never mind that our director didn’t take us to the night concert :( 

Then in college I helped run the 1998 [New York Voices], 1999 [Kurt Elling- I met him and he loved my arrangement and later recorded the same song-eek!] and 2000 [Dianne Reeves] festivals. 

This festival is amazing because it’s all student produced.  

We took and developed pictures [on FILM no less], made collages, built the room matrices, ran registration, warm up rooms, emceed the stage, filmed and recorded workshops and performances, fed masses of people and performed two concerts a night.  You name it.  We've all got all kinds of stories.

We ate slept and breathed festival from October to March. Kirk would alway say, "We're doing it for friends we haven't met yet." It was an amazing thing to be a part of.

On my mission I remember one morning walking around with my companion and telling her all about festival and she told me all about working on the Scroll at Ricks. In the meantime Suzie was running the festival [2002, 2003]

After my mission I came back one year and taught a workshop on practicing.  I was also there in 2004, ten years later when Jon Hendricks returned and sang with Soundsation.  Then I started coming as a director: 2006 Eckstein Middle School, 

2007 Inglewood Junior High [Do you know how many JC Penney's I drove to to get matching shirts?]

and 2008 EW

[I converted them into one big Sara Gazarek fan club.]

& 2009 EW.

That's Sara in my classroom with my kids!

I especially loved last year Kirk sitting on a little kids chair in a church nursery watching my kids warm up  and just beaming.  What a wonderful jazz family to be a part of. It’s even so far reaching that one of my students at the University of York sang at festival in 06. We had a visiting professor from Miami here in the fall and when she heard I was from Seattle and she asked if I knew....and before she could finish I said yes and we compared names.  Then she told my teacher, "She's from good people."

Last year they started a solo room and I took a load of my students.  This year they took themselves.  One of them took it upon her self to help everyone else pick out tunes, put together a combo, rehearse them and around ten of them performed.  Their fearless leader was chosen to perform at the concert last night after which she was recruited by USC and CWU.  I’m just a little proud. [Apparently she ran into Suzie and had a heart attack because for a minute she thought it was me.]

Then on facebook I looked at pictures of friends choirs on tour singing at festival and doing school exchanges.  Man I love choir tours.  They’re the best.  

So I’m a little festival home sick. I’m missing out seeing my kids, hearing the incredible night concerts and reconnecting with my jazz family.  And there's not even a hint of a consolation jazz camp. So here’s a big jazz hug to you and hoping that I’ll be employed next year and back at festival.  

Sure there’s a big jazz world outside Edmonds, but home is home.