The award-winning Roosevelt Jazz Band offers a musical holiday gift thisyear, a "Jazz Nutcracker," to 2,000 students from Seattle elementary schools.
The high school band will give two free concerts Dec. 1 featuring selections from Duke Ellington's reinvention of Tchaikovsky's holiday classic. The performances willbe at 10 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. in Roosevelt High School's auditorium at its temporary home in Wallingford, 4400 Interlake Ave N.
Composed toward the end of Ellington's career, the Jazz Nutcracker is an example of a great modern composer rethinking and re-imagining the work of a revered classical composer. Ellington renamed movements in Tchaikovsky's work with jazzy titles such as "Toot Toot Tootie Toot" and "Sugar Rum Cherry."
The Roosevelt Jazz Band's annual Nutcracker concert is a holiday tradition for many Seattleites. Now, for the first time, it will be available free for the younger set.
The performances will kick off a weekend of nutcracking fun for the band in which it will perform the full Ellington Nutcracker at the Benaroya's Nordstrom Recital Hall Dec. 3 at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and
Sun., Dec. 4 at 2 p.m. (Tickets are available through Ticketmaster:$20 general admission and $13 students/seniors).
The Roosevelt Jazz Band is internationally recognized as one of the best high school jazz bands in the United States This past May the band placed in the top three at Essentially Ellington, considered the premier competition for high-school jazz bands in this country. Sponsored by Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, it has been open to schools west of the Mississippi since 1999. In the seven years since, Roosevelt has been a finalist six times, earning first place in 2002, second this year and in 2001, and third in 2000.
Downbeat Magazine also chose Roosevelt's 2005 entry as the nation's outstanding high-school jazz ensemble performance. The International Association of Jazz Educators selected the band to perform at its conference this coming January.
Named "Jazz Educator of the Year" by Downbeat Magazine in 2004, Scott Brown has directed Roosevelt's jazz program for 22 years. He grew up in Seattle, graduated from Roosevelt High School and the University of Washington. He is a faculty member for Jazz at Lincoln Center's summer academy for band directors. His awards include the 2002 Christa McAuliffe, Washington Educator Award, and the PONCHO Outstanding Music and Arts Educator Award in 2003.[[In-content Ad]]
