The Greene County High School Jazz Band has a busy February of competitions coming up.

Director Wes Anderson says the jazz band will head to Morningside College tomorrow for the Morningside Jazz Fest. Two other competitions are at Indianola High School for the Indianola Jazz Encounter on February 17th and then on February 24th is the Jim Coffin Jazz Festival at Woodward-Granger.

Anderson points out that their goal is to qualify for the Iowa Jazz Championships held later in the spring. He says one way to qualify is to win your respective district contest. The South Central Iowa Bandmasters Association (SCIBA) contest was held in December, which Anderson says was too early for them to participate. However, he talks about qualifying as a “wild card.”

“So you can go to another competition and beat somebody who won their district competition. You can also go to a competition that has more than three people (schools) in your classification. So for instance, we’ll go to Morningside Jazz Festival and there should be more than three (Class) 3A schools there, and hopefully if we come out on top of that, then I’ve told the kids our goal is to qualify for that wild card pool this year.”

Anderson adds that he likes his chances of being able to qualify for the Iowa Jazz Championships this year.