Last week schools from all around the state of Nebraska and some from Iowa and South Dakota came to Northeast Community College for the 30th annual Jazz Festival. Over 2,000 high school students from 82 performance groups from the region performed on Monday and Tuesday at the Cox Activity Center. The two types of groups that performed were Show/Jazz Choir and Jazz Band. A variety of music was performed, from all eras in American History. Music all the way from classic jazz hits like Ella’s Fitzgerald’s “Hard Hearted Hannah”, to Katy Perry’s hit “Fireworks”, and Skillet’s “Awake and Alive.”
The competition was broken up into two days. During the first day, groups from Class IV and Class III performed. All of the groups that performed in the Class IV division were either junior high schools or middle schools. The schools that took the most awards was Wahoo Middle School, from Wahoo, Nebraska, and Westridge Middle School, from Grand Island, Nebraska. Wahoo took a total of three awards. The awards they won were Third Place in Class IV jazz band, Outstanding Vocal Soloist, which was awarded Karissa Koranda. Westridge tied with a total of two awards. In the jazz band performance, Westridge took home First Place in the in Class IV, and Second Place in the show/jazz choir performances.
The final results for the Class IV show/jazz choirs are as follows. First Place went to Westridge Middle School from Grand Island, Second Place was awarded to Barr Middle School from Grand Island, Third Place went to Wahoo Middle School and finally Fourth Place went to Louisville Junior High, from Louisville. The Outstanding Vocal Soloist was awarded to Karissa Koranda from Wahoo Middle School.
The Other groups that were performing at the competition were jazz bands. In this part of the competition there was a variety of group’s performing. In this case, Norfolk Junior High and Fremont Middle School, won most of the awards in Class IV jazz band. Norfolk took both Third and Fourth Place in the jazz band competition. Fremont took two awards home, taking home First Place and Outstanding Instrumental Soloist, which was won by Meredith Batten, and Alto Sax player. The final results for the Class IV jazz band was First Place being awarded to Fremont Middle School, Second Place to Westridge Middle School, and Third and Fourth Place awarded to Norfolk Junior High.
On the second day of the competition, groups that performed on were from Class II and Class I. There were a lot of schools that performed chart topping hits, including Weswood High School from Sloan, Iowa, who performed Skillet’s “Awake and Alive” In Class II, the schools the results at the end of the day were as follows. First Place was awarded to Westwood High School, from Sloan, Iowa, Second Place was awarded to Seward High School. The Third Place trophy was awarded to Aurora High School and Fourth Place was awarded to Central City High School. The Outstanding Vocal Soloist trophy was won by Hannah Beck, from Central City High School. At the end of the day, many schools went home happy with awards.