The Prince Albert Youth Jazz Band will hit the Vincent Massey School stage for their second ever Winter Open House concert on Wednesday in a grand style.
“Last year the winter one was more about, ‘hey, these pieces aren’t necessarily concert ready but we wanted to show the parents of our band members some of the things that we’ve been working on,” Band Director Scott Roos said. “I remember last year, maybe we would play like one quarter of a song and then stop and go ‘hey, that’s as far along as we are right now.’ A lot of the kids were still just learning how to be a part of a big back or jazz band. This year now, we still have some new players of course, but we also have some experience.”
Roos said the open house serves multiple purposes. It gives the band a chance to perform so their parents can know exactly what the students are doing. He said it’s also a way of just getting the word out that Prince Albert has a youth jazz band program.
“Vincent Massey is our rehearsal space,” he said. “It’s our house. It’s the soundboard we use. It’s our lighting and everything. We like to try and put on as professional a show and setup as we possibly can.
“The bottom line is we want to create performance opportunities for these students,” he added. “Ideally, as many professional performance opportunities as possible.”
Roos said they band has improved significantly over the past year. At previous open houses, the group would play a quarter of a song or half a song because they hadn’t learned the rest yet.
While it’s still young group, Roos said they are musically exceeding his expectations.
“We are playing, in this band, songs that I wouldn’t have even imagined possible even a year ago,” he said. “There’s (pieces) we’re playing that I haven’t, with a group, touched in 12 or 13 years (since) I was teaching high school in Yellowknife.
“These guys are handling it like champs. They’re really serious about what they’re doing and they’re committed to excellence and moving forward and onward and upward.”
With the band developing so quickly, Roos has started working on another major project: creating a big band festival in Prince Albert.
Plans for the First Annual Prince Albert Big Band Festival at Vincent Massey are still in the early stages. Roos has already reached out to big bands and jazz bands in the area to gauge their interest in taking part.
“We’re just trying to clear some dates,” Roos said. “We have a date in mind, but we want to make sure the date good potentially work for other bands to join us on the bill.”
Roos said the festival would also serve as a fundraiser for the band, since joining is free.
“We use money that we raise to purchase new music and, if we need, equipment that can maybe be a little more rugged or durable,” he said. “Right now, a lot of the money that we’ve had through sponsorships or that we’ve made performing has gone into just purchasing repertoire, like new songs.”
As a teacher himself, Roos said the jazz band has been a great opportunity to help the next generation of musicians.
“It’s nice to be able to bring up and mentor some of these young players and get them used to playing in what I’d call a pretty high level, high achieving band. I think it’s not really as much about the trajectory as it is ‘is there musical growth happening?’”
Wednesday’s Open House begins at 6 p.m. at Vincent Massey School.
—with files from Jason Kerr/Daily Herald
