‘Serious and dedicated’: Students of Spokane All-City Jazz Ensembles bring soul to Imagine Jazz Festival

Spokane’s youth are keeping the spirit of jazz alive and well, as displayed during the Jazz in the Air Imagine Jazz Festival.

Most Sundays, Riverfront Park is relatively quiet with the river meandering and daygoers chatting up and down the many walkways. But this past Sunday, the park was teeming with the sounds of brass solos, rolling arpeggios, strong accents and the soul found within swing.

The festival was held in conjunction with the city’s ongoing Expo ’74 50th Anniversary Celebration and was organized by one of the city’s premier musicians and jazz enthusiasts, Rachel Bade-McMurphy.

“Imagine Jazz was founded to stimulate and inspire the local community,” said Bade-McMurphy, who knew the Expo celebrations would be the perfect fit for one of Imagine Jazz’s many locally based events. “I thought, ‘Let’s have a jazz festival! Let’s include 10 bands, let’s get the students playing, let’s get the professionals playing, all as a community celebration.’”

Many of Spokane’s best jazz musicians took to the stage throughout the day, but the event was kicked off in impressive fashion by two Spokane All-City Jazz Ensembles (SAJE): the SAJE All-Star Middle School Big Band and the SAJE All-Star High School Big Band.

For the event, each student was handpicked by their school music instructors and featured young musicians from across the county (including districts like Mead and Deer Park). They were selected on the basis of not only skill, but their true interest in jazz and willingness to commit.

“Their level of performance was truly remarkable,” said Stephan Friel, a professor of saxophone at Eastern Washington University and one of the conductors of the high school group. “They all really took the opportunity to heart, prepared really well, worked very hard, and fed off of each other’s talent . It’s pretty special.”

The students within each group had about two weeks to prepare and only two rehearsals. They received the pieces and sight-read during the first, came back a week later with more practice under their belt, and had them perfected by performance time Sunday.

“Having heard them read the music during the first rehearsal, which was already pretty impressive, you can tell they put in a lot of work and went home and really hunkered down,” said Matthew Wenman, who acted as the other conductor of the high school group and is a music director at Shadle Park High School. “It says a lot that these kids were willing to take their first weeks of summer and do whatever is necessary; it just shows how serious and dedicated they are.”

This sense of dedication and love was present during each performance. Especially within such an intimate setting on the grass of Havermale Point, it’s difficult to ignore even the little aspects of the style that each student emphasized in their own ways – whether it was a well-accented note during a solo or the energetically harmonized wall of sound that helps make jazz unique.

Jazz is intentionally difficult to convey, and describing its sense of beauty and importance can be just as hard. But for Shadle Park High School student and trumpeter Anthony Williams, the word “soul” comes to mind.

“After a solo, a director told me I use a lot of soul – it really lets me put myself out there and use a lot of energy,” Anthony, who will be a sophomore this fall, said. “Because of that I’ve dedicated almost this entire summer to jazz.”

Whether it be “soul” or one of the many ways to describe jazz and the culture it creates, events like Jazz in the Air are tasked with not only keeping that culture alive, but reinforcing it as well.

“A lot of these students just want more,” Wenman said. “Especially during the summer, it’s important to engage with the community and give them more chances to actually perform; this is pretty special.”

“Greatness happens early on,” Friel added. “It’s important to catch these students as they’re developing and catching them young at the middle and high school level is paramount to the importance of their hopefully lifelong endeavors of performing this music.”