[Coleman]

Well, tonight we had a jazz competition in Reading, PA. It was our first of the season. IF you all don't know, I play the trumpet in the Easton Area High School Jazz Band. We are known to kick ass...same with Reading. Anyway, we performed our songs--The Prez, Quintesence, and Buds. Quintesence featured our lead alto sax player. Buds featured our lead trumpet player on the fluegelhorn(sp?). We finally made it to the awards ceremony. We first got the rating of Superior(highest possible). I was pretty happy about that. Then came the individual section awards and solo awards.

First up was the "best rythm section award".......::anouncer:: And it goes to.......Easton Area High school! I was thinking great. Atleast we got one award. The next award was best trumpet section ::anouncer:: And it goes to.....Easton Area High School! AWESoME! I'm glad my own section won an award. Next was the Best Trombone section award. :::anouncer:::: And it goes to.....Easton Area High School! WOW! Our trombones suck this year. NO offense to them, but they are really really bad. Hey, 2 of them are freshman and the leader player is in 10th grade. I figured that was a "freebie". We didn't get the best sax section award though. I was pretty pissed since we have the best saxes in the area. I guess it all depends on what the music selections are. Maybe the other school that got it (East Penn or something) picked some songs that featured the sax section as a whole.

The solo awards kicked ass too. We recieved Best Brass solo which went to our lead trumpet player. He played the flugelhorn(sp?) in the Prez. Then another honor was getting the "Best Musicianship award". That was a new award that was deticated to a past student that recently died of cancer. He was at Harvard studying Music. He was a great composer...he arranged a couple jazz pieces for Reading High in competition. Anyway, that went to our lead alto player in Quintesence. She deserved it....well done.

Overall, we recieved 5 out of 9 awards at the festival (i think there were 9 bands there). I thought the night went verrrrry well biggrin: