Playing Music Outside the Script: Jazz Band

The Jazz Band is a school activity where musicians meet every Friday after school in the black box theatre (currently Mr. Bott’s room) to learn the fundamental and improvisational skills of jazz. This year is the 7th year Mr. Bott has been in charge of the Jazz Band, and since then the group has grown under his great passion and guidance. In less than two weeks, the Jazz Band will travel to Hong Kong to attend the Hong Kong International Jazz Festival. Given this context, I found it a great opportunity to introduce the Jazz Band before their trip.

The Jazz Band, according to Mr. Bott, was founded a long time ago, well before he took charge of the group in 2009, as part of an American tradition. The jazz band consists of a total of 16 musicians, including 4 saxophones, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, a piano, guitar, bass and a drummer. Although the jazz band is a young group, the musicians in the group are all passionate about playing music and greatly value the group.

According to senior Paraash Manwani, the Jazz Band is a “very unique group, as musicians do not just rely on the sheet music presented to them, but express their soul to the music and express their feelings to the music by the way they play their instrument.” Mr. Bott stated a similar opinion, expressing that the jazz band offers musicians in our school a different musical experience from their typical band class as students are asked to improvise outside their given music sheet. Although some musicians in the jazz band are often reluctant to improvise, some take the challenge and have fun in doing so.

In less than two weeks, the jazz band will attending the 3rd annual Hong Kong International Jazz Festival, hosted by HKIS. This jazz festival was started by HKIS to give the students in Hong Kong, Guangdong and Taiwan the chance to share their music. A total of 6 schools will take part in this festival, where musicians will receive guidance from professional musicians from all around the world and learn new skills on their instrument or about jazz itself. Mr. Bott stated that from this festival, he hopes his musicians learn that playing jazz is all about taking a simple risk of improvising and that it is hard to improve your skills if you choose not to improvise. He also added that by improvising, they will be able to improve their jazz language and be effective in communicating their ideas musically.

This Jazz Band festival will definitely help the musicians improve their skills and learn more about improvising. If any other musician in our school is interested in joining the Jazz Band and improving their musical skills, feel free to email Mr. Bott (tbott@aisgz.org) or visit him in his room, which is now where the black box theatre was.