Jazz festival to invade Fullerton

This week, Fullerton College will be hosting its annual jazz festival.

 

The jazz festival is a two day event for middle school, high school and college performing groups. The festival serves as a place for them to compete and also to watch other groups perform. The festival also provides clinics and workshops, the goal of which are to help the students get better.

 

The festival will take place on Friday and Saturday. Friday will be the vocal day, which is open to high school and college vocal jazz choirs and soloists, and show choirs and soloists. Saturday will be instrumental day which is open to middle school and high school big band, combos and soloists.

 

For the competition, schools are placed into different categories: novice, intermediate and advanced. On the instrumental day an extra category of heavy will be added. The students will play in front of a panel of judges, who are jazz educators and performers. At the end of both days there will be an awards ceremony.

 

Another aspect of the festival is the clinics, which co-chairman Bruce Babad feels is the more important aspect.

 

“For a long time that need was a place for school to compete. But now competition is kind of becoming secondary to our educational vision of the festival. And so I think the biggest assest of our festival are the clinics.” Babad said

 

There will be six clinics for vocal students, which according to Jamie Shew co-chairman of the festival, at least triple the amount then they’ve had in the past. And there will be 19 instrumental clinics.

 

Students will also get a chance to see some of FC’s performance groups. The vocal groups that will be performing are J-Train, VJ2, and Big Band Vocal Soloists. The instrumental groups that will be performing are Combo’s 1-3, the Big Bad Band, the Jazz Lab Band, the brass choir, the Cabana Boys and winners from Fullerton College’s next singing sensation.

 

According to Shew, there will be 115 schools attending this year’s festival, and 320,000 participants. Most of the schools are from California, but there are schools from Washington and Arizona attending.

 

The festival is not invitational, so any school can come as long as they have the right criteria.

 

Both students and faculty will be working at the festival to make sure nothing gets out of hand. The faculty will take care of administrative things, the judges and the clinicians and the groups.

 

Student volunteers, which come from the jazz performing groups and the symphonic winds and concert choir classes will be there performing different jobs from recruitment, check-in, hospitality, setting up gear, sound systems and tents.

 

“It’s just a monumental festival to put together….We couldn’t do it without our student volunteers and are so thankful for that,” Shew said.

 

One of the student volunteers, Lalo Agredano, is music performance major Agredano said that working at the festival is a very positive experience. He also said that for the most part, the students enjoy working at the festival. He said he’s heard of some complaints, but for the most part the comments are always positive and the students love coming back.

 

Agredano is in charge of recruitment this year and hopes to get more people to come to the school.

 

Despite the current economic crisis, the jazz festival has not been in any danger. According to Dean of Fine Arts Bob Jensen ,the jazz festival is self-funded and does not rely on the District at all. Registration fees and money raised from the merchandise sales help pay for the festival. Also, Jensen believes that there has yet to be a discussion about cutting the festival.