OCEAN CITY – The Ocean City Arts Center presents an exciting afternoon of music at 2 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 7 in the Lecture Hall, Ocean City Free Public Library, 1735 Simpson Ave.
This will be the Arts Center’s second Junior Jazz Battle Royal which features two teen jazz ensembles. The concert is free and open to the public. With limited seating, reservations are strongly suggested and can be made online at oceancityartscenter.org or by calling the office at (609) 399-7628.
Up first up in the Junior Jazz Battle Royal will be TD Jazz for Teens Ensemble from the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) directed by Mark Gross. TD Jazz for Teens is a comprehensive and sequential jazz education program that develops well-rounded young performers through access to life-changing experiences. Students receive top-notch musical training and study with world-class working artists in courses including technique, theory and composition.
Following will be the Ambassador ensemble from Jazz House Kids, which is the only community arts organization in New Jersey exclusively dedicated to educating children through jazz: America’s home- grown art form. In the schools, at the Jazz House and in the community, they give students an artistic edge – music, mentoring, education and leadership at work. It is irected by Darrell Smith, PhD.
The Arts Centeris proud to feature these youth jazz ensembles who are keeping the jazz flame burning bright with brilliant and virtuosic performances. The inaugural Junior Jazz Battle Royal last spring featured Deptford High School’s Jazz Ensemble and The Happy Accidentals from Egg Harbor Township High. Because of the overwhelming reception of the event, the center plans to make this a semi-annual program.
The concert follows in the tradition of the Battle of the Bands popularized by an early 20th century concert staple where two popular orchestras would try to outperform one another in front of a live audience, like the first time ever Count Basie Orchestra and the Duke Ellington Orchestra came together in 1961. That historic meeting, later referred to in jazz circles as The Battle Royal, has been recreated through live performances by other jazz orchestras and ensembles over the years including on the stage of the 2011 edition of the Jazz à Vienne festival. Likewise it brings to mind the annual Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival held at Lincoln Center in New York.
With this Junior Jazz Battle Royal, Ocean City will come alive with the sound of some of jazz’s future stars facing off, not in competition, but in synergy.
This program is made possible in part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.