Wheeling H.S. defends championship at jazz festival
Wheeling High School's jazz band won its third consecutive Grand Champion award at Rolling Meadows High School's 31st annual Jazz in the Meadows Festival Saturday - a worthy honor for retiring band director Brian Logan.
That track record should prove the award was no honorary one for Logan and his students - something anyone who heard them play Saturday would know well, said Chris Buti, director of bands and fine arts coordinator at Rolling Meadows High School.
"They're just an incredible group," Buti said of the Wheeling High School band. "Incredible improvisers! They play beyond their years."
Also receiving a plaque Saturday was retiring Buffalo Grove High School band director Ed Jacobi, who's been to all 31 Jazz in the Meadows festivals, Buti said.
The annual event was started in 1985 by then-Rolling Meadows High School band director Len King to fill the void left when the Oak Lawn Jazz Festival ended after 25 years due to the retirement of its high school band director.
But Buti has held the nearly year-round responsibility of organizing the Rolling Meadows event for more than half its history already.
Though originally more modest and local in scope, the festival now attracts more than 100 jazz bands and combos from 60 schools in five states.
"It's the largest high school jazz festival in the Midwest," Buti said. "It's probably one of the things our school is best known for."
Bands can choose to compete or give an exhibition performance. But all receive valuable comments and feedback from accomplished judges, many of whom are from colleges within the festival's wide jurisdiction.
Such is the quality of competition at the festival that those bands who did leave with awards undoubtedly would have been focused on performing at the highest level, Buti said.