Jazz. Since its heyday just under a century ago, it’s become a largely under-appreciated genre of music, being gradually lost in the laundry heap of rock, pop, and rap. But for every Nirvana, Taylor Swift, or Kendrick Lamar, there’s at least one Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, or Art Blakey. Ever since I was told to play a blues scale in sixth grade(shoutout to Mr. Valenti and the retiring Mrs. Severino, go Cobras), I’ve wanted to be one of the latter three, alongside a myriad of other career aspirations. In the fourth year of my jazz career, I was unable to make the cut for BGHS’s top group, Jazz Ensemble. However, I was able to tag along with them for the fortieth installment of the annual Jazz in the Meadows competition at Rolling Meadows High School in my first field assignment for The Charger.
Jazz in the Meadows is an event that means a lot to me. As a graduate of Cooper Middle School, I have seen our Jazz Band 1 win the Junior High class twice in my three years there, myself playing lead alto saxophone in the second of the two. In fact, Cooper has won at Meadows the most of any school, period. But enough about Cooper. I arrived at Rolling Meadows at 9:30 on Saturday and was immediately met by sophomore trombonist and fellow Cooper alum Shai Argentar(I promise I’ll do my best to stop mentioning Cooper). Eager to get this article on the road, I asked him how he was feeling going into today’s performance, having already won the competition with the Cobras in his seventh grade year and participating in two other editions of the event. “I’m just hoping to get out there and play,” he said. Asking him about the Ensemble’s chances of placing in their class, he said “it’s a long shot.”
It took a flight of stairs and some more small talk with Shai, but we reached our homeroom for the day: a French classroom. After looking at the various posters scattered around the room and realizing that French lifted all of their question words from Spanish, I saw senior tenor saxophonist Logan Yourg. Since he was a senior, it was his last Meadows as a student. This gave me the perfect question to ask: “do you think that this performance will be a good conclusion to all of the previous competitions you’ve participated in here at Rolling Meadows?”
Logan gave a great answer: “Jazz in the Meadows has been my favorite competition every year. I know a lot more people here, that makes it a lot more fun to watch other groups. When I was a sophomore in the Jazz Ensemble, we got third [place] with Nick and Matt [Hamilton], which was a lot of fun, and that was probably my best memory. It wasn’t a first place trophy, but it was still fun. It’s a great time here and I really want to do my best.” As for his goals for this year, he replied “I want to place in my last year. A solo award would be cool, but that’s not my focus right now. I want the group to be good, not just myself as an individual.”
Once we got to the warmup room, which looked to me like a history class, I was immediately struck by a wonderful cacophony of horns playing long tones and practicing rhythm and dynamics. Then they played scales, tuned, and ran through their set. Did you know that songs could have 219 measures? I didn’t. Before tuning, Genualdi stressed that “[the band] should be feeling good about this set. [They’ve] played it at home(January’s Chicagoland Jazz Festival at BGHS) [and they’ve] played it at Durty Nellie’s(a pub in Palatine). This should just be like another gig.”
The warmup ended and we walked over to the theatre. After handing some auxiliary equipment to bassist Blake Lasek, I assumed a Terry Crews-on-America’s Got Talent-esque position backstage and soaked in three great pieces of jazz. First, horns flew high in the opener A-Train, featuring solos from Zac DeGuzman on tenor sax and Augi Santiago on alto sax. Next, the Ensemble slowed it down a little with the beginning of Coda, before Harris Brinson came in on the drums and sped it up just in time for a solo from Logan. Finally, if they hadn’t already, the Bison brought the house down with Hullabaloo, with four amazing solos from Logan, Matthew Block on trombone, Augi, and Zac.
Afterwards, I asked Ensemble director Vince Genualdi how he thought the band had improved from their first rehearsals in the beginning of the year to now. “[The Jazz Ensemble has] made a lot of progress in a lot of different ways,” he said, “our biggest concern that we had this year was just reading [music] and putting in a lot of effort into improving literacy. A lot of individuals have worked really hard to improve improvisation skills, and I think we’re heading in a good direction.”
Fast forward five hours and one last great performance by a Cindy Severino-directed Cooper Jazz Band 1 later, and Augi, Logan and I were sitting in the gym to watch the Honor Bands for each of the four high school classes. In the end, unfortunately, the Bison didn’t place at Jazz in the Meadows. However, they still received a first division rating, so there were still successes to be found. Overall, Jazz in the Meadows was a wonderful experience for all involved. This is Will Citron, reminding all of you readers to keep swinging and fight on.
