The Greene County High School Jazz Band will be making a two and one half hour trip to the Iowa Lakes Community College Jazz Festival today.

Band Director Becky Greiner says that since her students didn’t get to perform at the South Central Iowa Bandmasters Association district contest in December, this will be the first Iowa Jazz Championships (IJC) qualifier they have been to this school year.

The Iowa Jazz Championships will be on April 18th in Des Moines.

According to official IJC rules and regulations, there are two ways to qualify.  The first way to qualify is by receiving an automatic bid.  Bands must place either first or second in each of the six district contests in the state.  The second way is a wild card invite.  The IJC Board of Directors determines at least three wild cards bands in March and must meet at least one of the three criteria:  beating a band that is an automatic qualifier at an independent jazz festival, win an independent jazz festival with at least two bands in that class or finish third in a district jazz festival.  Since Greene County High School didn’t compete at districts, they will focus on the first two criteria for a wild card spot.

Greiner comments that her bands have finished as high as third place at Iowa Lakes Jazz Festival in recent years.  However, she states that this is a rebuilding year because her band graduated eight seniors last year and seven and 17 members are freshmen.

The bands that usually give other schools a challenge are Spirit Lake High School and Storm Lake High School.  Greiner points out that this festival is a great chance to experience other bands outside of their district.  The selections that the band will perform are a swing-style song called “125th Street”, a musical ballad “Body and Soul” featuring Jasmine Mobley on alto saxophone and “Blues Bossa” a samba-style song.