Roosevelt High School’s new band director smashes jazz’s glass ceiling

When five local high school jazz bands take the stage at the Paramount Theatre on Friday, March 31, for the 26th annual Starbucks Hot Java Cool Jazz concert, you can be sure all the ensembles will swing, solos will sizzle and a packed house of students, parents and fans will jump for joy. But this year, one significant detail will stand out. For the first time ever, one of the conductors will be a woman.

Her name is Hannah Mowry (rhymes with “story”), and she succeeded longtime band director Scott Brown at Roosevelt High School last September. Since lifting her baton, Mowry has not only swung the band into Hot Java, she has shepherded it into the May finals of this year’s highly competitive Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition and Festival, in New York. Not bad for a 26-year-old teacher in her first year at a big-city teaching post.

“She’s a firecracker,” said Brown. “She brings a fresh energy and a high level of knowledge and musicianship. She can take care of business, and she’s a really good musician. I’m super excited for the future for Roosevelt.”

Mowry is not the first woman Seattle director to take a band to Ellington; that honor goes to Kelly Clingan, of the nonprofit school JazzED. Nor is she the first director to get a band into the competition in the first year at a new school. Jared Sessink, whose Garfield High School Jazz Band also plays this year’s Hot Java, did that, too, in 2020, after taking over from award-winning director Clarence Acox. And other women have directed jazz bands at Seattle-area high schools over the years.

But Mowry is the first woman to smash the glass ceiling at Hot Java. And more importantly, as Roosevelt’s new band director, she is the first woman to direct one of the Seattle area’s high school jazz bands that have consistently stood out at competitions around the country like Essentially Ellington, the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival and the Reno Jazz Festival. And while she is well aware that systemic bias against women — as well as other traditionally excluded groups — is bigger than one high school podium, she is already making a dent, introducing progressive programs and her own holistic approach to music. Like all good teachers, she’d rather talk about her students than herself. She seems to have won their hearts, as well as those of her colleagues.

Raised in the Tri-Cities, Mowry grew up in a musical family and was “immersed,” she said, in jazz from the time she was a little girl. She took up trumpet in fifth grade, made advanced jazz band in seventh, and by age 13 was an ardent fan of the late trumpeter Roy Hargrove, particularly his ballad playing and jazz fusion/hip-hop work with The RH Factor. At Central Washington University, she played principal trumpet in classical ensembles and was a featured soloist in jazz band. Mowry gives a lot of credit to her teachers, who included Kevin Swisher and Chris Newberry at Hanford High School, and Chris Bruya, Lewis Norfleet and John Harbaugh at Central. But one of her biggest influences was the great trumpeter Ingrid Jensen of the all-women group Artemis. A poster signed by Jensen hangs on Mowry’s office wall, next to a quote from Susan B. Anthony.

“That’s my inspiration wall,” said Mowry this month, sitting for a post-rehearsal interview. “Ingrid was a guest artist at my high school my senior year, and I think that really changed the trajectory of my life. … She held me to high expectations. I needed that. She was like, ‘You’re worthy of playing this music.’”

Jensen hasn’t forgotten.

“She’s a powerhouse,” said the trumpeter. “She brings bubbles of joy to everything she does, including playing the trumpet and just showing up as someone who cares about the younger generation.”

That description sounded tailor-made for Mowry as she rehearsed two tunes for the Ellington competition — Thad Jones’ swinging “Low Down,” and Duke Ellington’s and Billy Strayhorn’s gorgeous “The Star-Crossed Lovers” — as well as a patch of Maria Schneider’s pastoral “The Thompson Fields” for Hot Java. Counting off four beats in a hoarse shout, she moved from one section to another with alacrity, kindness and, yes, high expectations. At one point she sang out a part to show how it should be phrased; at another, she modeled the music with her trumpet. When the sax section flagged, she played “Low Down” from her phone over the band room speakers.

“Every note matters!” she stressed.

But for Mowry, teaching isn’t just about great performances. It’s about why the music is important to begin with.

“Maybe it’s to access part of your own humanity,” she offered. “Maybe it’s to have empathy for the story of somebody else. Maybe it’s to be able to express whatever hardship is going on in your life. There’s something bigger than to be good, just so we can say that we’re good.” 

Students have responded.

“She gets a lot of things that a lot of people wouldn’t get,” said 18-year-old senior Naomi Cole, who plays bass. “She’s highlighting [woman composer and pianist] Mary Lou Williams, artists that haven’t been as well represented. It’s inspiring.”

Indeed, Mowry has been sharing a podcast about Williams with her students, and Roosevelt’s four-tune program for Hot Java is entirely composed of pieces by women: Schneider, Williams, Lil Armstrong and Garfield High School graduate Roxy Coss.

“We have to create spaces where women can try and fail the way everybody else does,” said Mowry.

Part of that process, surely, is a discussion of the male gaze. As a young girl, Mowry said there were a lot of times when she was talked about “only on my looks and not my musicianship.” Though she doesn’t bring her own experiences into the classroom, she said it’s important — for boys as well as girls — “to address that, to name it, in the band room.”

Ironically, Mowry said she experienced sexism in many musical settings but much less as the winner of the 2017 Miss Tri-Cities Competition, which she counts as “a fantastic experience” that not only offered her a platform to advocate for music in schools but also helped pay her college tuition.

Before coming to Roosevelt, Mowry taught four years at Mount Si High School in Snoqualmie, where, not coincidentally, she co-directed a jazz band that made the Ellington finals three times. She also presented a wind band piece there by award-winning Black composer Omar Thomas, “A Mother of the Revolution!” The composition portrays Marsha P. Johnson, a trans woman who was an integral part of the early LGBTQ rights movement and took part in the historic Stonewall Riots.

“Diversity, equity and inclusion are part of my core values as an educator,” said Mowry. “Not only gender equity, but diversity in conversations around race and gender identity and sexual orientation. I want to include the voices of other people.”

Mowry involved the whole music department in “A Mother of the Revolution!” as well as a dance team.

“She is one of the most collaborative teachers I’ve ever gotten to work with,” said her former colleague at Mount Si, Becca Woodbury. “We deeply miss her.”

Mowry’s responsibilities at Roosevelt are not confined to jazz. She also has three wind ensembles, a percussion ensemble, band camps, marching band, pep band and the spring musical. When she first took on this very full plate, she was keenly aware of the esteemed reputation of her predecessor as well as the fact that she was the first woman to take the job.

“I had to think really hard about whether I was going to take this position because nobody is Scott Brown but Scott Brown,” she said. “Not just because I’m a young woman, although that certainly is part of it, but also because this is my fifth year teaching. But ultimately, to me, the kind of program that Scott built here was the perfect match for my personality and my skill set … so at the end of the day, was it like stepping into the shoes of Scott Brown? Well, I’m wearing my own shoes. And I stand on his shoulders.”

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Hannah Mowry is not the first woman to helm a Seattle-area public high school jazz band. She is the first woman to direct one of the Seattle area’s high school jazz bands that have consistently stood out at competitions around the country like Essentially Ellington, the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival and the Reno Jazz Festival.