Essentially Ellington top prize goes to Roosevelt High

For the second time in five years, the Roosevelt High School Jazz Band has won first place at the Essentially Ellington competition in New York.

The prestigious contest was Saturday and Sunday, culminating in a concert Sunday night at Avery Fisher Hall by the top three finalists.

"It was unbelievable," said Scott Brown, Roosevelt High School band director. "The whole festival was at a higher level than ever. At the highest level, was the sense of camaraderie among the kids. They were high-fiving each other. It was magic."

Second place went to the Agoura High School Studio Jazz Band (California); third place to Foxboro High School (Massachusetts).

The prizes were $1,000, $750 and $500, respectively.

"The quality of the bands was so great, we had no idea who was going to win," said Roosevelt trumpet player Charlie Fisher.

Washington schools also won several outstanding soloist acknowledgements:

Hannah Jones (Edmonds-Woodway) and Carl Majeau (Garfield), clarinet; John Cheadle (Garfield) and Logan Strosahl (Roosevelt), alto saxophone; Joel Gombiner and Devin Mooers (both of Garfield), tenor saxophone; Devon Yesberger (Edmonds-Woodway), Benjamin Hamaji (Garfield) and Scotty Bemis (Roosevelt), piano; and Reed Ferris (Roosevelt), banjo.

Roosevelt also picked up four "outstanding" acknowledgments for its reed, trombone, trumpet and rhythm sections, while Mead (Spokane) was "outstanding" for its trombone section.

Roosevelt student Alex Dugdale won this year's Essentially Ellington writing contest, in which students are asked to submit a 500-word essay describing an experience that led to their love of jazz.

The Cadillac of school jazz competitions, Essentially Ellington began in 1996 and was opened to schools west of the Mississippi in 1999.

Since then, Seattle-area schools have dominated the event.

Roosevelt won first place in 2002 and Garfield took first place in 2003 and 2004.

Of 15 finalists in this year's competition, four were from Washington state: Roosevelt, Garfield, Edmonds-Woodway (Edmonds) and Mead.

Both Garfield and Roosevelt have made the finals eight times. Edmonds-Woodway and Mead have each made it twice.

Over the past nine years, Washington has accounted for 31 of the competition's 140 finalist slots.

The competition is run by Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, a nonprofit arts organization directed by trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis.

High schools are invited to submit tapes of three compositions by American composer and band leader Duke Ellington, selected from a list of six.

This year's tunes were "C Jam Blues," "The Flaming Sword," "Jumpin' Punkins," "Old Man Blues," "Sophisticated Lady" and "Second Line."

Musical scores of the tunes were sent to more than 900 high schools in the U.S. and Canada, and American schools in Bolivia, Brazil, France, Japan, Malaysia and Switzerland.

From the 88 bands that entered, Jazz at Lincoln Center selected 15 finalists, which competed over the weekend.

The competition judges were Marsalis, composer and author Gunther Schuller and band leaders David Baker and David Berger.

The esteemed Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra joined the three finalists in Sunday night's concert.

Paul de Barros: 206-464-3247 or pdebarros@seattletimes.com