Students Sing And Dance At 33rd Annual Northeast Jazz Festival

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Students from Bellevue West #2 perform hits like We’re All In This Together from High School Musical and Nicest Kids In Town from Hairspray.

Middle and high school student musicians competed this week for top honors at the 33rd annual Northeast Jazz Festival in the Cox Activities Center on the Northeast Community College campus in Norfolk. The two-day event drew 80 musical groups from Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and South Dakota with over 2000 students performing.  The Monday and Tuesday competition hosted jazz bands and show choirs for school levels III, IV and I, II respectively. Twenty trophies were given out at the end of each competition day for first, second, third, and fourth place and solo and instrumental awards.

Dr. Linda Boullion, Chair of the Northeast music department says the Jazz Festival helps students develop as musicians and shows them what other schools are doing.  It gives them a valuable opportunity to perform in front of other students and they look forward to competing again next year. “You can see a lot of pride in these students when they perform. Our Northeast students help out and the Jazz Festival participants find out that they don’t have to be a music major at Northeast to participate in all the musical groups we have here on campus,” said Dr. Boullion.

The event is sponsored by the Northeast Community College music department and the Norfolk Area Jazz Ensemble (NAJE). NAJE uses the proceeds to support student musicians with scholarships and to promote music activities at the college. Viewpoint reporters put together highlights of both days in these two videos on our Viewpoint Youtube channel.