Rough Riders play smooth, take 2nd place at jazz competition

Congratulations to the Roosevelt High School Jazz Band for placing second overall in the 16th Annual Essentially Ellington Jazz Competition and Festival in New York City this weekend.

The RHS Jazz Band, under the direction of Scott Brown, competed in a field of 15 high school jazz bands from around the country.

The jazz band of Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida took first place overall. A fellow Washington state high school jazz band from Mountlake Terrace took third place overall.

Watch Roosevelt’s competition performance (with thanks to KING 5 TV for supplying the embeddable video):

An article about the competition by Seattle Times’ jazz critic, Paul de Barros, can be found here.

See the Roosevelt High School Jazz Band perform in NYC today and Saturday, LIVE

UPDATE 11:46AM – The Roosevelt High School Jazz Band is performing last today, and the Mountlake Terrace High School Jazz Band will be last tomorrow (Saturday). The full schedule is here.

The webcast will be available for viewing after the fact (says the MC on the live feed just now), so if you miss RHS’s or MTHS’s performances today, you can catch them again later. I will post the links when they are available.

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Our local news partners, the Seattle Times, have reporter Paul De Barros in New York City covering the The 16th Annual Essentially Ellington Competition & Festival. Two local bands are performing in it this year: The Mountlake Terrace High School Jazz Band, and the Roosevelt High School Jazz Band.

Thanks to the miracle of modern technology, we’ll be able to see these bands perform without traveling thousands of miles (or even getting out of our chairs).

Click the picture to open the Seattle Times' Essentially Ellington page

The Seattle Times has set up a page on their website on which you can see De Barros’ twitter feed (and click on his links to see more), as well as view the jazz bands’ performances once they are underway.

The first performance from one of our local bands starts at 11:30 AM today (Friday).

For more information on The 16th Annual Essentially Ellington Competition & Festival visit their homepage here.