Jazz Band hits all the right notes at the Monterey Next Generation Jazz Festival

Showing off their continued excellence once again, Northgate took top for the fourth year in a row at the Next Generation Jazz Festival on April 1 in Monterey. With their win, the Jazz Band, led by Director Greg Brown, has earned the prized spot on the setlist for next year’s 60th Annual Monterey Jazz Festival.

Senior Kevin Prough has been a trumpet player in Jazz Band I for three of the four years the band has won the award. “Hundreds of groups auditioned for one of the 12 spots that we got,” said Prough of their invitation to the event

In order to compete at Next Gen, schools must send an audition tape to the festival to take one of 12 places sought by a hundred groups. After, they compete at the festival in order to gain a coveted place on the setlist for the following fall.

Prough has been with the band three of the last four years the band has posted top scores at the festival. He was a member of Jazz Band II his freshman year, the first year Jazz Band I took the title.

“Winning repeatedly shows not only that jazz is alive and well in the world, it speaks to the jazz program Mr. Brown has built, and the standards,” Prough said. “One of the nicest things about winning repeatedly, especially winning this year with a new group, is that it shows it is indeed the program rather than just the students.”

Director Greg Brown has directed a winning band five separate times, four with Northgate. Brown said that every win past their second has seemed “surreal.”

“I am amazed by them and very proud,” Brown said. “It’s amazing that a group with 17 new people wins. They do that because they dedicate themselves to excellence and expressing music at a very high level.”

“It was very challenging and fun, and I’m really glad the way it ended,” said senior Ricky Gamez, the band’s guitar player who is completing his first year in Jazz Band I. Last September, he filled in on guitar with Northgate’s band at the Monterey Jazz Festival when a now-college student from last year’s band did not return from college.

“This time I get to be there because of me, on my account, not because of what someone else did,” he said.

This year’s band members will hold some late summer and fall rehearsals, planned around the six members of the band who are graduating seniors. Those seniors are planning to return next fall to perform at the festival.

Although he is not yet certain where he will attend college in the fall, Prough said he will return to take the stage at the 60th Monterey Jazz Festival in September.

“Of course I’ll be there,” he said.
Jazz Band I and II will perform at Yoshi’s in Oakland on May 22 in their final performance for this year.