by Hibah Samad
The Grammy Award-winning Mira Costa Jazz 1 band finished first in the Large Ensemble Category at the 5th Annual National Jazz Festival, a prestigious competition that took place in Philadelphia on February 10.
The festival featured 68 ensembles from 50 schools across the country. The MCHC Jazz band shared the stage — and competed with — some of the largest schools in the nation. Joel Carlson, the director for Mira Costa Bands, expressed awe at the multitude of ensembles from across the country filling the Philadelphia Convention Center, both in sight and sound.
“As you would walk down the hallways you would see and hear group after group performing in the different halls, left and right,” Carlson said. “Students also had the opportunity to attend educational clinics on specific topics given by world-class adjudicators, renowned jazz performers, and educators.”
The spirit of the festival is intended to be less about competition and more about students inspiring each other. As one of the young musicians, Gill Scott, says on the National Jazz Festival website: “It’s not about the awards, or the competition, or the fight to first place, it’s about the community that is created with doing something that we all love.”
It’s the first time MCHS Jazz has performed at this festival, which was founded in 2020. But Mira Costa students have previously showcased their talents in similar events before. The National Jazz Festival format is based on The Berklee High School Jazz Festival in Boston, known for once being America’s largest and oldest jazz festival. Mira Costa’s Jazz 1 traveled to perform at the Berklee Festival in 2017.
During the National Jazz Festival, individual Mira Costa musicians were also honored and celebrated for their exceptional talents.
12th Grader Ewan McPhee, who plays the trumpet, won the 2024 National Jazz Festival Outstanding Musician for his playing with the MCHS Jazz 1 Band. McPhee’s prowess was further recognized with the Outstanding Musician award in the large ensemble division. With nine years of experience on the trumpet and four years on the French horn, McPhee’s talent shines brightly on the jazz scene.
“It is so gratifying to know that my hours of commitment and refinement paid their
dividends in such a rewarding way,” McPhee said. “However, I’m more thankful that my efforts were able to bring something valuable to our band’s performance.”
McPhee expressed gratitude for Carlson and for his fellow musicians.
“He teaches us to push ourselves as people and musicians and motivates us to run and fly as far as he does with our work in music,” McPhee said. “I also want to thank all 19 other incredible musicians of Jazz 1, who I could not have accomplished this without.”
Ewan’s brother, Miles McPhee, who plays the saxophone, was also recognized. He was selected to be in the National Jazz Festival Diplomat (All-Star) Band directed by Wayne Tucker.
The National Jazz Festival’s mission is to “bring together high school and middle school jazz musicians and educators from across the nation to strengthen music education and performance while cultivating an inclusive, joyful jazz community based on a mutual love of jazz.”
Carlson said the students began their search for the perfect performance pieces as early as fall.
Their opening number was “A New Day” by the SWR Big Band, featuring a bassoon solo.
The second song was a complex guitar piece called “Uncertainty,” written by Brad Kang and most famously produced by the University of North Texas Music School, one of the top jazz colleges in the world.
“I purchased it seven years ago because it was so cool, never knowing if we would ever be able to play it,” Carlson said. “But as I pulled it out to slowly sight-read it this fall, it became apparent that the band would indeed be able to handle it and we continued to practice together slowly, gradually speeding up day by day while keeping all of the wonderful intensities intact!”
But one of the show’s highlights was the debut of Mira Costa’s Jazz 1 performance of “The Wacky Big Band Time Machine,” a piece written specifically for Costa’s Jazz students by the esteemed jazz composer Drew Zaremba.
Carlson said they turned to Zaremba to compose a song emphasizing the bands’ ability to play in the old and new styles. The idea came about during their Winter Concert rehearsals.
“Hearing the older style of Ellington’s ‘Nutcracker’ (itself a jazz version of Tchaikovsky’s original melodies) rehearsed back to back with Goodwin’s ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’ made us wonder what it would have been like if the bands of those two giants had been able to share the stage, trading music back and forth,” Carlson said.
While MCHS Jazz impressed the judges and attendees with their performances, Carlson said that the real achievement was his students’ commitment to reaching their fullest potential.
“Their unwavering dedication to the highest quality of performance, their focus in each rehearsal, and their willingness to put in time outside of class, often during lunch or after the school day, to help set up and tear down so that we could use every second of the period to rehearse together surpassed some of my greatest hopes,” he said.
Carlson has been teaching Jazz at Mira Costa for the past seventeen years and has worked tirelessly to create a robust Jazz Band program and has worked with other MBUSD instructors to expand the music opportunities offered at Manhattan Beach Unified.
“We began with one incomplete Jazz Band in the fall of 2007 and have steadily built the curriculum in scope and excellence forward from there year by year,” Carlson said.
The Mira Costa music programs have earned national recognition from top music professionals and educators. The program has received the GRAMMY® Signature Schools Gold Award, ranking it as one of the top three in the nation. The Jazz Band has also performed a solo concert in Carnegie Hall and has won the President’s Cup National Concert Band Festival. Individual musicians, such as Ewan, have also made a name for themselves by being honored on the national level.
Ewan McPhee’s passion for music and his experience in the MCHS Jazz program have led him to grow on and off the stage.
“The challenging material we play in Jazz has hugely grown my passion for improving my musicianship,” McPhee said. “Also, being the president of the Jazz Band has taught me how to deal with adversity in a way that helps the group be more cohesive and collaborative.”
Beyond their accomplishments, Carlson hopes his students will understand the magic of being their own musical artists as they pass through his class.
“We hope these kinds of achievements will be byproducts of the daily pursuit of musical excellence for the sake of the music itself and the love of the audience,” Carlson said. ER
Watch here: MCHS Jazz 1 Winning Performance (Video for online version ONLY)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=2XzR2S2SKDC3NZP5&v=oxJtA4XBGuw&feature=youtu.be
