Buffalo High School’s Jazz One, Two, and Three ensembles performed a concert with Buffalo Community Middle School’s Seventh grade Jazz band and Eighth grade Jazz band Monday night at the Performing Arts Center for their Jazzin’ It Up concert with guest artist David Singley.
David Singley is a professional guitar player. He has performed with professional jazz groups, Broadway musicals, and many Symphony groups. Singley has published music, and teaches at McNally-Smith college of Music and Carleton College. Singley was featured as a soloist in every piece during the evening.
The seventh grade Jazz Ensemble started out the concert with a rock and jazz piece. Both featured an array of soloists. Fans of the Bison Pep Band would recognize the third piece, “Louie, Louie.” Seniors of the High School Jazz groups danced along in their seats.
“I thought the they did great,” said Music Teacher Mary Soden-Welliver. “It’s great for the kids to see seventh through twelfth and for parents to see a progression. The soloist was inspiring to get the kids to listen to jazz guitar and not just rock guitar.”
The eighth grade jazz ensemble came out on stage playing and opened with “What a Wonderful World.” The piece was more alto saxophone centered rather than trumpet. During “Six String Shuffle” Eighth graders Zane Jovanovich and Mike Miller on guitar, along with Singley were featured soloists multiple times.
Buffalo High School’s Jazz Three, conducted by Band Teacher Scott Rabehl, They opened their part of the concert with “Jump-Start” and ended with “Birdland,” which was described as the one of the greatest pieces of jazz written.
Jazz Two featured a funk song with multiple soloists. Their second piece was a driving rock piece called “Hocus Pocus.”
“I really like Hocus Pocus because of the sixteenth note runs,” said Isaiah Green. “They just keep going. It was called driving rock so it had a steady beat and a driving pulse. And it changed into a half time thing were you could really groove to when doing solos.”
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Rabehl retook the stage to direct Jazz One. He described “Softly”, their first piece as “ballad, soft rock thingy,” chuckles scatter the auditorium. They originally were only going to perform two pieces, but added a third in fear of being out funked by Jazz Two.
