Essentially Ellington started in 1996 as a high school jazz band competition festival, where the program selects 15 bands around the U.S. to play tunes selected by Ellington. This event is hosted by Jazz Lincoln Center where the school bands will play music in the library, typically all music of duke Ellington but overtime they’ve added other composters to the selection. Playing with sheet music is not recommended but also not prohibited. Although many musicians say playing without it helps you connect and personalize your music more

For OCSA, Jazz A attends Ellington when selected. Some understudies also attend. Their jobs are to learn from the players and go about how the competition goes for next year, so they are more prepared.

The price to go changes each year. This year the festival is 5 days instead of 3 due to it being the 30th anniversary of Ellington; this changes a few things. Originally the price per student was 600, but due to funding of the department’s events and the SAC committee, it has been lowered to around $500 for the girls and stayed at around $600 for the guys.

With it being the 30th anniversary, instead of 15 bands from the US, they selected 30 bands from all around the world. There will be bands from Japan, Spain, and Australia. This provides opportunities such as playing at the metropolitan opera house.

The competition consists of a few key factors:

• Inaugural Q&A: everyone meets in rose hall, and the students and finalists of the competition get to ask the members of the orchestra about anything on their minds.
• Jam sessions: a list of ten tunes, 5 people from OCSA’s band get selected to play together and rerun through the music.

The bands get split in half and play in separate rooms; from each group of bands the judges pick the best 5 bands from each to play in the final rounds.

As always, OCSA is just glad to be in the competition playing amongst other talented musicians.