Jazz One

• Our advanced Jazz Band for 17-22 of our best jazz musicians.  This ensemble is auditioned each fall, and typically has a traditional instrumentation of 5-6 saxes, 4-5 trumpets, 4-5 trombones, and a full rhythm section.  Jazz One participates in the Essentially Ellington qualifying competition each winter, the Quincy Square Jazz Festival, the Bellevue High School Jazz Festival, and performs locally at our annual Swing Dance, as well as several other events on campus each year.

Jazz Two

• Our advanced Jazz Band for 17-22 of our best jazz musicians.  This ensemble is auditioned each fall, and typically has a traditional instrumentation of 5-6 saxes, 4-5 trumpets, 4-5 trombones, and a full rhythm section.  Jazz One participates in the Essentially Ellington qualifying competition each winter, the Quincy Square Jazz Festival, the Bellevue High School Jazz Festival, and performs locally at our annual Swing Dance, as well as several other events on campus each year.

Jazz9

• Our advanced Jazz Band for 17-22 of our best jazz musicians.  This ensemble is auditioned each fall, and typically has a traditional instrumentation of 5-6 saxes, 4-5 trumpets, 4-5 trombones, and a full rhythm section.  Jazz One participates in the Essentially Ellington qualifying competition each winter, the Quincy Square Jazz Festival, the Bellevue High School Jazz Festival, and performs locally at our annual Swing Dance, as well as several other events on campus each year.

Spartan Brass Band

• Our advanced Jazz Band for 17-22 of our best jazz musicians.  This ensemble is auditioned each fall, and typically has a traditional instrumentation of 5-6 saxes, 4-5 trumpets, 4-5 trombones, and a full rhythm section.  Jazz One participates in the Essentially Ellington qualifying competition each winter, the Quincy Square Jazz Festival, the Bellevue High School Jazz Festival, and performs locally at our annual Swing Dance, as well as several other events on campus each year.

Combo2 and Other Small Ensembles

• Our advanced Jazz Band for 17-22 of our best jazz musicians.  This ensemble is auditioned each fall, and typically has a traditional instrumentation of 5-6 saxes, 4-5 trumpets, 4-5 trombones, and a full rhythm section.  Jazz One participates in the Essentially Ellington qualifying competition each winter, the Quincy Square Jazz Festival, the Bellevue High School Jazz Festival, and performs locally at our annual Swing Dance, as well as several other events on campus each year.

Community Swing Dance

• Our annual all-ages, community swing dance is a wonderful event featuring an hour of live dance instruction split before and between three sets of live big band swing music by the award winning Bainbridge Jazz Collective.  Our top big band, Jazz Band One, plays two heavy sets of well known classics like "In the Mood," "Moonlight Serenade," and several others, and Jazz Two plays one solid set of great arrangements.  Often, the jazz band at Woodward Middle School will join us and play a couple of tunes, too.  This event is a huge fundraiser for the band.  Mark your calendar for next year's event - don't miss it!

Essentially Ellington

• The Essentially Ellington Competition is a national contest held in NYC each spring.  There is a qualifying competition with recorded auditions each winter that we participate in.  Each fall, we learn three authentic transcriptions from Duke Ellington's extensive big band catalogue.  The contest features another famous arranger each year, in addition to Duke Ellington.  Our recordings are evaluated by big time jazz musicians and educators working with Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and we learn so much from their intricate feedback.

Quincy Square Jazz Festival

• Each fall, Jazz One also prepares a set of festival music for our local jazz contest.  The Quincy Square Jazz Festival is held in Bremerton each year, the city where famed arranger and producer Quincy Jones, at twelve years of age, first touched a piano, an experience he says changed his life forever, in a single instance.  This festival has emerged in the wake of Poulsbo's Viking Jazz Festival closing down during covid-19.  Bainbridge Jazz One won sweepstakes at this festival in 2017 and 2018.

Puget Sounds Jazz Festival

• Founded in 2016, the Bainbridge Jazz Collective hosts a festival for jazz combos, New Orleans Brass Bands, and other non-big band jazz ensembles each year.  This festival celebrates improvization, interaction, and spontaneity between young jazz musicians, rather than focussing on polished arrangements.  This suportive and engaging event starts with a day of school performances (schools from all over Puget Sound), and concludes with an evening concert featuring the best school bands from the day, and a festival concluding performance by each year's professional headlining guest artist. 

Bellevue High School Jazz Festival

• Each spring we learn another set of festival big band literature and compete in the Bellevue High School Jazz Festival.  Bainbridge Jazz One has won the A/AA division several times at this festival, and each year several of our soloists take home Outstanding Soloists awards.

Other Performances

• In addition to the above performances, we also hold a series of Jazz Nites at BHS where we perform our festival repertoire for our home audience.  These events usually feature a combination of open program "jam" session time, where we scramble students into different combos to perform jazz standards in a traditional setting, assigned combos where students perform prepared music in small ensemble formats, and rehearsed big band music, where we perform our contest music in in large groups.

Optional Spring Trip

• In odd numbered springs, we take a big full program trip.  This trip is optional, but we try to take as many students as possible.  We typically alternate performing trips to California with sight seeing trips to the east coast.  On the east coast trips, we'll make a stop for an evening at a famous jazz club.