Colony trumpeter to play in Macy’s Thanksgiving parade

NEW YORK — Colony High School senior JayLynn Rogers is continuing a family legacy in music as she boards an airplane to New York City today to prepare for the 2014 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Every year, Macy’s Great American Marching Band invites students from thousands of U.S. high schools to audition for performance in the parade. Students’ performances are judged on technical proficiency, tone quality and “overall general musicianship,” according to musfestivals.com. Roughly 250 students are accepted.

Colony band teacher Jamin Burton has taught Rogers all four years and her older sister Melanie for four years before that. Their older brother Josh played in the Colony Middle School band, and JayLynn’s younger sister Katelynn, who was in the Colony Middle School production of Beauty and the Beast recently, also plans to play in the high school band next year.

“It definitely runs in the family,” JayLynn said.

Now Burton has a chance to single her out.

“Since day one she’s been really dedicated,” he said. “(She) works a lot and it shows because she’s one of the best trumpet players I’ve ever taught.”

JayLynn credits Melanie, who played the trumpet before her, as her inspiration.

“Being the little kid I was, I wanted to be like her, so I joined band,” JayLynn said. “She went on all of these trips for music, and I just thought it was really cool to go to those places, and I wanted to go there some day.”

She didn’t just join band and play one instrument, however. JayLynn also plays in Colony’s jazz and steel drum bands, the Mat-Su Concert Band and is part of “Shrek,” the upcoming musical at Colony. She also plays the French horn, piano and general percussion.

“She keeps herself pretty engaged, musically,” Burton said.

And she already has been on some of those exotic musical trips her sister always talked about. JayLynn said she went to Trinidad and Tobago her sophomore year with the steel drum band and to Pasadena, California, for the 2014 Rose Bowl, with about 80 of her marching band mates.

“It’s going to be a lot different,” she said, of flying solo to play in an out-of-state band.

Rogers is not the first Knight to perform in the Thanksgiving parade — students Gina Aki and Ryan Brehmer led the way in 2011 — but she is the only high school musician in Alaska to attend this year.

The Colony marching band is unique in itself, in that it seems to be the only marching band in the state with some staying power. Burton said for seven of the last 10 years, Colony has been the only Alaska marching band to keep on keepin’ on.

They do it well, too. Since 2006, the Colony marching band has traveled to parades in Washington, D.C., twice and also in New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl, prior to the Rose Bowl.

At the Rose Bowl, JayLynn said she may have found her dream college. Michigan State University — which played in the game on Jan. 1 this year — is currently at the top of her list, she said, but she also is considering the University of Idaho, her father’s alma mater.

After the Thanksgiving parade, JayLynn will perform with the Mat-Su Concert Band Dec. 5, the Colony High Band Dec. 11, and in the musical Shrek, which opens Feb. 5, 2015.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.