Washington High School offers a wide variety of fine arts for students to take. With things like painting, pottery, acting and music classes, the opportunities are endless. If students are interested in music one option is band, and while there is only one band class you can take for credit there are other ways for students to get an extracurricular music activity in their week. One of these options is jazz band. 

Jazz band takes just as much work and dedication as taking the regular band class, and students in jazz are expected to come to early morning rehearsals while also practicing and studying their music on their own time.

“If you want to get good at it you have to put in a lot of time, and study it. It’s like a subject that you have to study almost,” senior Aaron Brinkmann said. “Because it’s an art, there’s a lot of things that go into it, so you have to get a feel for it.”

People in the program improve their skills in many different areas and aspects as well. By being able to successfully balance their time by adding jazz band to their daily schedule, they gain important life skills like time management and commitment. Jazz band also helps students musically since jazz is different from the typical school band songs that are played.

“I’ll have to manage my time especially when I’m involved with other clubs,” junior Lily Schmitt said, “and musically there’s a lot of listening involved, [it’s] not just reading the music. You have to listen to stuff and have to play instead of just looking at the music and reading what’s on the paper.”

All grades can participate in jazz band, and the improvement that can be made each time can help motivate students to do jazz band for multiple years.

“Freshman year we didn’t do it for very long, there were only a few practices, and the music was really hard, so I was really terrible at that point,” Brinkmann said. “But then this year I have a lot more experience with the different things that go into it. So it’s a lot easier and it’s really cool to see how much I’ve progressed.”

For others the promise of a new experience is enough to persuade them to try out jazz band. Gaining this experience during high school is one of the ways that some jazz band students improve their skill set and try out new things.

“It’s just a lot of the new rhythms and experiences, like the concerts and new things that are going to happen with this different style of music,” freshman Shamus Rylee said. “It’s different compared to concert band. There’s contrasting sounds and ideas and processes so the two [styles] being able to combine is cool.”