3 Seattle-area high schools make finals of 2023 Essentially Ellington jazz band competition

Three Seattle-area bands have been selected as finalists for the 2023 edition of the highly regarded Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition and Festival. The 15 finalists were selected from 100 applicants across North America.

Two come as no surprise: Seattle’s Garfield High School and Roosevelt High School jazz bands, which collectively have made the Ellington finals 41 times in the past 25 years. Bothell High School, however, is an up-and-comer. After 15 tries, Bothell made the finals last year and has now turned in a repeat performance.

“I’m excited,” said the delighted Bothell band director, Phil Dean. “It’s our first two years, and they just happen to be back-to-back.”

Essentially Ellington takes place at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall, in New York, May 11-13. The three-day festival offers workshops, jam sessions, guided rehearsals and performances, as well as the competition proper.

Thirteen Seattle-area high schools have sent bands to Essentially Ellington since 1999, when it opened to schools west of the Mississippi. Garfield and Roosevelt have snagged first place four times each. As competition has stiffened, with many of the finalists coming from programs that draw from an entire city, not just a neighborhood, Seattle-area schools have fared less well, though Roosevelt took first place in 2019.

Dean said he feels like Bothell’s chances are a bit better this year: “I feel like the band — and soloists — are a little deeper, talent-wise.”

Jared Sessink, director of bands and jazz at Garfield High School, wrote in an email: “This is a special year. The seniors in the band have been with me since 6^th grade at Washington Middle School. I followed them up to GHS and we have been on this journey together for 7 years. A great way to send them off to the next phase of their lives.”

You can hear all three Essentially Ellington finalists at the Starbucks 26th annual Hot Java Cool Jazz concert March 31 at the Paramount Theatre.