By Jennifer Cardona
The Essentially Ellington held its Southern California Regional Jazz Festival on March 1 and 2.
Jazz at Lincoln Center, Southern California School Band and Orchestra Association and Riverside City College Coil School for the Arts presented in the collaboration.
The Essentially Ellington Program (EE) is an educational resource for high school jazz bands. Each year Jazz at Lincoln Center transcribes, publishes, and distributes charts by Duke Ellington and other seminal big band composers and arrangers with additional educational materials to bands across the world. They support its members throughout every school year with initiatives including teaching guides, EE website information, newsletters, a student composition contest and professional feedback of students’ performance of the charts.
Riverside City College Jazz Orchestra took the stage with guest artist Todd Stoll, trumpet player, and Bijon Watson, trumpet player. It was a treat for the students to see the composers that inspired them to play or help contribute to their passion.
Angelina Salcedo is a student at RCC. She plays the upright bass in the Jazz Orchestra. Salcedo shared what an amazing jazz festival it was this year with their guest artists.
“For me personally, playing with, well not with, but playing near John Clayton is really cool,” Salcedo said.
“Because I’ve learned a bunch of his pieces in music before and I really look up to him. So, him playing, him just sitting in the audience, and then getting to talk to him, listen to him give a master class and everything was super cool and super exciting. Then we get to play for a crowd that actually appreciates music … then everyone gets excited over things we get excited about.”
Not only was it an important performance for the high school students as they showed off and performed their own solos, but for all of the RCC Jazz Orchestra, where they knew they would inspire a younger generation of musicians.
Robyn Aguilar plays the alto saxophone in the RCC Jazz Orchestra. She shares how the performance was not just special to her, but it was special to many of the high school students that could see their future selves. She also shared words of inspiration.
“You’ll have hard days … it seems easy but it’s not,” Aguilar said.
“You’ll definitely have your hard practice days. Some people might think you’ll never get where you want to be, or you will never be like your heroes … But – you can always be better.”
