The academic workday hadn’t technically begun, but on a rainy morning last week at Bothell High School, a melodic run by four muted trumpets blared down a beige linoleum hallway on the north side of campus. The song was “Annie’s Dance,” a composition by trombonist Melba Liston. And it was being played — quite well — by the Bothell High School Jazz Ensemble I, a 20-student big band preparing to head to New York City for the Essentially Ellington competition, the nation’s premier high school jazz band showdown.
The competition runs from April 30 to May 2. It has traditionally been dominated by Washington groups. “The strongest high school jazz band tradition in America is in Seattle,” Todd Stoll, vice president of education at Jazz at Lincoln Center, said last year to Earshot Jazz. When the competition opened to national competitors in the late ’90s, Garfield and Roosevelt high schools came roaring onto the scene under respective band directors Clarence Acox and Scott Brown. This year, those two groups will be staying home. Bothell High School, a finalist for the fifth straight year, owns the longest current streak in Washington state.
But this has been a year of change for the group. Zane Romanek, a 32-year-old saxophonist, took over Jazz Ensemble I this year after moving to Washington in August. He’d previously been living in Casper, Wyo., working as an assistant band director. “My wife and I are Wyoming born and raised,” he said. “I came out to Washington State for All-Northwest the other year and looked around and thought, ‘Yeah. This isn’t too bad.’ ”
As Romanek adjusted to a damp winter on the north side of Lake Washington, the band adjusted to life under their new leader. The Essentially Ellington message arrived loud and clear: things are working out just fine.
Rigor, connection
Given a prompt about what jazz music meant to them in contemporary life, the Bothell High School musicians reflected on the intellectual heft of their early morning art form.
Nate Bardsley, a senior, said, “In a world plagued by short-form content and quick dopamine, jazz is a slow, rewarding process in which one can find their true self.”
Kathryn McFeeley, also a senior, said, “Jazz is a true form of connection. You can learn so much about someone by listening to them playing along or not.”
The students broke into their second song, Duke Ellington’s “Rockabye River,” and their devotion to the form became apparent. Romanek, wearing Adidas sneakers, brown corduroy pants and a pineapple-print short-sleeve button-down, gave off a youthful, empathetic air. He paced around the rehearsal, counting off time, clapping rhythms and scatting melodic lines when something seemed off. “Way to sing!” he told a trumpeter after an emphatic solo.
Romanek’s methods were remarkably democratic — he asked his students what they thought of his direction and relayed the thoughts directly onto his practice charts. During the third song of the band’s Essentially Ellington set list, saxophonist Benny Carter’s “Movin’ Uptown,” Romanek had his soloists “trade fours,” a jazz technique where improvisers shift solos every four bars. As the song came to the end of its bridge, Romanek asked his players to trade every two bars instead.
The students pushed back, telling him the quick swing rhythm came too fast to latch onto any melodic ideas in their improvisation. A few musicians nodded in agreement in the front row. “OK,” said Romanek, “that’s fine. We’ll just keep it like it was.”
Nothing about the interaction felt sheepish or forced. If the musicians were students of Romanek, he was a student of the music itself.
All about the music
Romanek took the Bothell job after the school’s previous band director was accused of having an alleged sexual relationship with a student in 2015. Charges weren’t filed after the incident came to light last year. Romanek said he preferred not to comment on the state of previous bands.
“We wanted to make it all about the music from the start of the year,” he said, seated in his office after practice. “The kids were really motivated from day one. We just wanted to find our sound. If we got into Essentially Ellington, then we’d get in. But it was really about the music itself. Fortunately, we wound up making it.”
The Bothell band will be joined in New York this year by Mountlake Terrace High School, directed by Darin Faul, and Shorewood High School, directed by Dan Baker.
Romanek credits local help for his early success with the jazz ensemble. “The community around the band is super supportive,” he said. “We have parents who are really dialed in. I’m very lucky: I get to focus on the music.”
He’s been too busy with teaching duties to experience much of the local jazz scene, but Romanek has been trying. “I’ve been getting out to a few gigs,” he said. “There are people that come through Seattle who would never come through Wyoming. The other week I saw (the Armenian pianist) Tigran Hamasyan. It was excellent.”
‘From the heart’
Even as Romanek rushed to tie up the last few loose ends of the band’s four-song set, he couldn’t totally hide his excitement about the upcoming contest. It will be his first time visiting New York City. “We’re going Tuesday through Sunday,” he said. “We’re scheduled to see ‘Hamilton.’ And we’re going to try and go to a few jazz clubs, probably Smalls and Dizzy’s. It’s my ninth year teaching, but in some ways it feels like my first. Everything is different out here.”
The band’s Essentially Ellington practice set closed with the Buck Clayton tune “Tippin’ On the Q.T.” As a bonus, they threw in “Blues in Hoss’ Flat” by Frank Foster, which they were scheduled to play at a midday concert later that week.
In the headspace of the calico-carpeted practice room, posters from past Essentially Ellington competitions lorded over the students as visible reminders of their mission. Jazz is not a competitive sport. But creative inspiration, regardless of genesis, is a valuable thing.
“Jazz,” said junior Caden Forrest, “is infinite stories waiting to be told. It can be anything you feel, or want to feel.”
“To me,” said sophomore Rowen Burr, “it’s all about the soul. It’s about playing from the heart.”
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