WHS Jazz Choir ‘swings’ through UAF

WASILLA — This year, UAF (University of Alaska Fairbanks, for those who don’t know,) once again held its famous Jazz Fest event, drawing practitioners of the early 20th century swing from all over the state. However, this year’s festival was significantly different from previous events.

Allow me to introduce some exposition. In prior years, students from a huge number of schools gathered at UAF’s campus, before each student decided which clinics to visit and hopefully improve their skills with their instrument(s) of choice. From Doo-Wahs, to the sound of saxophone solos, the place was filled with students of middle and high school affiliations. It was a chaotic, but friendly place to experience a truly amazing musical style.

Now, the festival is much smaller, with only about 15 schools showing up with either a band, a choir, or both. The schools were given a spot to place their belongings and instrument cases in, and given a master schedule to attend. All schools rotated through the available guest speakers and clinicians, before Friday, where all attending schools put on a massive, two-hour concert, showcasing each group, and giving students the much needed boost to their self-esteem from their peers.

In this concert, the Valley truly shone, through. Whether it was our high school’s “Bugle Call Rag” or Palmer High’s rendition of “Welcome to the Jungle”, we showed other groups all over the state that the Valley has a lot more to offer than giant cabbages.

Also, three of Wasilla’s graduating seniors received scholarships from UAF. They were McKenzy “Broulevaire” Brouillet, Cyle Ford, and Braydon Perrupato.

All in all, our band and choir did an excellent job this year, and we are extremely proud of our seniors and hope to see them in UAF’s own Jazz Band next year.

And in closing, for all of you who would like to see some of the prospective members of your Jazz Band, look to the video with this article.

Tristan is a junior enrolled in Wasilla High School’s Journalism class.