Jazz Fest and "Nat King" Charles

The first weekend in February is the Sitka Jazz Festival. This was our 3rd one. It is a mix of local and regional middle and high schools groups with professional talent from around the world. Southeast Alaska has a great tradition of jazz. Even in these small schools there is enough talent for groups that are better than I ever heard in Utah or California. The professionals do workshops with the students in things like improv, techniques, composition. This year we had school groups from Anchorage and Juneau, as well as few more I can't remember.

Sitka had 3 bands and one vocal group. This included 2 the middle school jazz bands. The high school vocal jazz is where Charles performs. He has discovered the joy of singing and this semester is also in the regular choir. Meg could not squeeze vocal jazz into her schedule this year although she sang with them last year.

The professionals included a trumpet player from the northwest(the down south one), a sax player from New Orleans, a jazz

trio whose pianist is from Israel, and a jazz vocalist from the San Fransico area. All were awes. They not only performed by themselves, but with each other and with the school bands.

Charles got to do a duet with vocal jazz during the Nat King Cole standard "Unforgetable". So not only is he a first year singer, but he has the guts to be in the limelight. A cool kid.

Since Meg didn't get to sing, she helped with the video crew, running one of the cameras. It was a lot of standing, but she had a good time, learned some stuff, and used her creative eye to give us some really cool shots of the performers.