The public is invited to the final music concert of the school year with the Greene County Middle School.

Band Director Bob Palmer says the concert will be tomorrow night with the return of the jazz band and their performance at 6pm in the commons. After a 15 year absence of having a middle school jazz band, Palmer talks about why he wanted to bring the program back.

“I had promised the kids that we were going to do this because all of the pieces were falling into place. We had middle school kids that can play lead trumpet range, we have kids that can play bass, (and) we have kids that can play drumset, it just made sense to start a jazz band. I am a professional jazz musician, I’ve done jazz recordings. I mean that’s really where my main interest lie and so I mean the kids notice that I get a lot more excited when I can start to show more things that I know.”    

Palmer also invites the audience to dance during the jazz band performance because that style of music was meant for people to dance along to. 

Following the jazz band will be the 6th grade concert band at 6:30pm and then the 7th and 8th grade concert band will be at 7pm, with those performances in the auditorium. Palmer talks about the development of the 6th graders and the improvement they’ve shown over the year.

“So sixth grade is coming along nicely. I’m starting to introduce some more advanced concepts that I really haven’t in past years because they seem like they want to do more. So I’ve been introducing a lot of scaler work lately for the kids that are not in choir, especially, because they need more stuff to do when they’re not in band. That’s leading to us having more opportunities to do extra things on top of our normal concert band stuff.” 

Tomorrow night’s concerts are free and open to the public.