By Mark Coddington
mark.coddington@theindependent.com

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Independent/Scott Kingsley Nathan Adams plays the baritone during the Westridge Jazz Band's performance of "The Look of Love" during the Islander Jazz Band Festival at Grand Island Senior High School. Independent/Scott Kingsley Hastings College professor of music Debra McKim talks with Westridge Jazz Band baritone saxophonists Brady Powers and Jaron Baier following their performance in the Islander Jazz Band Festival. Click Thumbnails to View

Among the 14 bands that played at the seventh annual Islander Jazz Band Festival on Monday were five middle school bands the most in the festival's history.

The festival is meant to be a place for bands to experience a concert-like atmosphere in preparation for their bigger shows later this spring and to gain some valuable feedback from expert clinicians.

Those benefits are just as useful for middle school bands as their high school counterparts.

For both the Walnut and Westridge middle school jazz bands, Monday's performance was their first of the year and many members' first jazz band performance ever.

But even though playing jazz is a far cry from concert band, middle school jazz band members are up to the challenge, said John Schultz, Walnut's band director.

"You know you've got a core of kids who really care about it and are really going to work at it," he said.

In both Schultz's Walnut band and Terry Speed's Westridge band, students are chosen by audition, and the result is a band composed largely of seventh- and eighth-graders.

Both directors said their students see the jazz band as an honor a chance to play more difficult (and more fun) music.

"They just seem a lot more enthusiastic," Speed said. "They're real happy to be in there playing."

Their music might not contain the blistering riffs and screaming high notes that top high school bands play, but the clinicians at Monday's festival said middle school jazz musicians often have some qualities high-schoolers lack.

"They're like sponges they soak it all up," said Matt Sheppard, who teaches band at Millard West High School and two elementary schools. "They don't have preconceived notions about what it should be."

The Westridge band members displayed that eagerness to learn during their critique, as they quickly picked up Debra McKim's instruction about how to play a fortepiano note hit it loud, then back off and crescendo later.

McKim, a professor of music at Hastings College, said that even though the level is simpler with middle-schoolers than the instruction they're giving to their regular bands, the concepts remain the same.

"We work on the same things in my band. We just describe it differently," she said. "Music is music."

Both Speed and the clinicians said they've seen a drastic improvement in the quality of middle school jazz bands over the past few decades. They at least partly attributed the change to better music directed at their level.

When Speed began at Westridge 30 years ago, "the music was really boring," he said. But now composers are writing more challenging, interesting music specifically with middle school bands in mind.

Both Schultz and Speed called jazz band their favorite areas to teach. Schultz said he enjoys seeing students grow to appreciate a style of music he loves so much.

"This is just another avenue that they get to explore," Schultz said. "That's good for their musical development."