The 2009 Iowa Jazz Championships will be held on April 14th.
The Iowa Jazz Championships are proud to announce that Musco Lighting of Oskaloosa will serve as the sponsor of the 2008 Iowa Jazz Championships. We are greatly in debt to Musco for their support of this year's event.
The Iowa Jazz Championships are a unique event that brings together 60 of Iowa's finest high school jazz ensembles (15 bands from each of the four IHSMA classes) to Des Moines for a great day of jazz each April. The event was founded by Iowa high school jazz educators over thirty years ago and continues to be an important event on the high school band landscape each year.
All Iowa high school jazz programs are eligible for an invitation to the Iowa Jazz Championships. Automatic invitations are issued to the first and second place bands in each class of the six district jazz festivals in the state of Iowa. In districts where there are only two bands in a class, only the first place band is issued an automatic invitation. In districts where only one band competes in a class, that band is issued an automatic invitation. Each district is empowered with operating their own district jazz festival to determine automatic qualifiers. Each March the Iowa Jazz Championships Board of Directors meets to determine wild card qualifiers to the event. The IJC Board is made up of the directors from the top three bands at the previous years Iowa Jazz Championships. In order to be eligible for a wild card selection bands must meet one of three criteria. Those criteria are as follows:
1) Beat a band that is an automatic qualifier at an independent jazz festival in Iowa.
2) Win an independent jazz festival in Iowa with at least two bands in that class.
3) Finish third at the district jazz festival.
Only bands meeting one of these three criteria will be considered for a wild card invitation. The IJC Board looks at the results of all Iowa Jazz Festivals and selects the most qualified bands for wild card invitations. The board takes this job very seriously. All jazz festivals in the state send their results to an IJC co-chair for consideration. Nothing other than the contest results is used to determine wild card invitations.
The IJC Board annually selects co-chairs and a treasurer to serve the event. Patrick Kearney from Johnston (pkearney@johnston.k12.ia) and Alan Feirer from Winterset (afeirer@winterset.k12.ia) serve as co-chairs, and Richard Wolfe serves as the treasurer. Please feel free to contact any of us at any time if you have questions about the Iowa Jazz Championships. One of our primary goals is to make the event and the process that leads up the event as open and easy to understand as possible.
The 2008 Iowa Jazz Championships will be held on Tuesday, April 15th. I hope that you will consider joining us for a great day of jazz in Iowa. Again, if you have any questions please contact Patrick Kearney or Alan Feier and we will be glad to be of assistance.
IJC Board of Directors
Jason Heeren, Aurelia
Dianna Hannah, Prairie Valley
Bruce Peiffer, North Mahaska
Tom Plummer, Southern Cal
Greg Forney, Okoboji
Jeff Shoening, Treynor
David Lang, Independence
Jason Pentico, Pella
Steve Britt, Harlan
Rich Medd, Iowa City West
Kevin Massey, Sioux City North
Steve Shanley, Cedar Rapids Washington
Competition for classes 1A, 2A, and 3A are held at the Polk County Convention Complex. Competition for class 4A is held at the Des Moines Civic Center. Admission for the day portion of the competition is $5. Tickets can only be purchased at the day of the contest. Tickets to the evening finals are $10. Tickets for the evening finals can only be purchased from the Civic Center Box office. The evening finals concert begins at 7 p.m. in the Civic Center auditorium.
The 2009 Iowa Jazz Championships will be held on Tuesday, April 14th.
