Alumni Perspective with Jen O’Shea
Jen O’Shea is a graduate of the Oliver Ames High School in Easton, Massachusetts and is currently a Music Education major at Berklee. A clarinet player, she attended the High School Jazz Festival 2008 as a senior, where her band placed second in their division.
John Sturm Wins The Inaugural Herb Pomeroy Award
Berklee College of Music is pleased to introduce the First Annual Herb Pomeroy Jazz Composition/Arranging Contest winner, John Sturm.
Jack Fitzgerald and his Music Experience, Canton HS
One of the best things about the High School Jazz Festival is being blown away by a performance and then thinking, “Wow, I wonder what that player is going to go on and do…?”
Sometimes it all goes right. Sometimes a player from a first place-winning ensemble wins a scholarship to the Berklee five-week session. And then… that same player is awarded a 4-year scholarship to study at Berklee. Now, that’s cool.
Click on through to read about Jack Fitzgerald an HSJF alum and current Berklee student who has recently started the “Summer Music Experience”.
Alumni Perspective with Ben Roberts
Berkleejazz.org talked to Ben Roberts, a current Berklee student majoring in Piano Composition and a four-time alum of the High School Jazz Festival with Lexington High School in Massachusetts. Ben won MVP honors in his combo and was awarded the Outstanding Musicianship Award in his senior year.
Where are from? Do you come from a musical family? What was your musical background as a kid?
My dad studied piano and loved jazz but my parents aren’t musicians. It was my grandmom and aunt, who both played piano, who managed to get an old NYC jazz pianist to donate a piano to me. My parents started me taking classical piano lessons at 7 years old — I just wanted to make noise — but that first teacher made me play a lot of Bach.
I grew up in Lexington, MA and am lucky to have had such a great jazz program to grow into.
Solid Foundation
The sun was shining through the huge Hynes Convention Center window behind the Woodstock Academy Jazz Band performing in room 206. Sophomore Percussionist Evan Dauphinais, donning a black fedora, was laying down the beat.
“Good drums, solid foundation,” said one of the judges as he began the panel’s assessment of the band’s performance. It seemed like just another chapter in the epic story that’s unfolded over the past 43 years of the Berklee High School Jazz Festival. It wasn’t just another chapter, and Evan isn’t just another jazz percussionist.
Two days before the Festival, when other competitors were practicing, packing, and posting to their facebook pages, Evan was undergoing chemotherapy at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute to treat his Hodgkins Lymphoma. Continue Reading
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