Berklee High School Jazz Festival to Host 3,000 Musicians

The 46th Annual Berklee High School Jazz Festival will host 3,000 musicians on February 8, 2014.

February 3, 2014

The largest high school jazz competition in the U.S.—Berklee College of Music’s 46thHigh School Jazz Festival—will host more than 200 bands and vocal ensembles featuring 3,000 students from 13 states competing for $175,000 in scholarships to Berklee’s Five-Week Summer Performance Program. Participants will also enjoy clinics and concerts by Snarky Puppy, whose funk-influenced R&B chops earned them the 2014 Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance, and by Cloud Ludum Ensemble, which presents an interactive music program allowing audiences to hone their compositional techniques.

The entire event is free and open to the public and will take place on Saturday, February 8, 2014, at the Hynes Convention Center, 900 Boylston Street, 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Scholarship and award winners will be announced at 5:30 p.m. followed by a winners’ showcase concert at 7:30 p.m. Find the complete schedule at berkleejazz.org.

In addition to witnessing performances by the top high school jazz bands in the country, audiences will have the chance to experience top Berklee students performing in a salsa ensemble, a Tower of Power ensemble, a P-Funk ensemble, and other ensembles in addition to a performance by the college’s a cappella group, Pitch Slapped. 

Students will also be honored for outstanding achievements in jazz composition. Matt Wong is this year’s winner of the annual Herb Pomeroy Jazz Composition/Arranging Contest and will hear his composition “Prima Luce” performed by the Berklee Rainbow Band, Berklee’s longest-running ensemble and one of the world’s oldest collegiate big bands. Wong, a San Francisco School of the Arts student, will receive a full scholarship to the Berklee Five-Week Summer Performance Program.

 

Allen Bush is the director of Media Relations and can be reached at abush@berklee.edu. Liz Lupton is a publicist in the Office of Media Relations and can be reached at llupton@berklee.edu.