For more than 40 years now, the Garfield Jazz band has been a cornerstone of the school. With an impressive history backing them, the program has long proved itself a source of pride for both Garfield students and staff alike. What you may not be aware of though, is how they spread this throughout the city of seattle, performing gigs all around the community. 

Recently assigned student gig coordinator, 11th grader Durgan McBroom, coordinates gigs for his fellow bandmates. “My position on it is really new this year. This is the first time we’ve had a student leading who decides who is doing gigs” McBroom said. The program is run through a parent organization, Garfield Jazz Foundation, described on their website as a “part of the nationally recognized Fine Arts Department at Garfield High School in Seattle Washington.” Interested parties are then able to contact McBroom, requesting gigs, who then relays the information to the rest of the Jazz band. He takes into account who’s interested and forms groups from there. Once people are picked, the preparation begins. Although, as McBroom stated, the Jazz band is often already ahead of the game in this respect. From their roughly 400-page book of songs, “The real book”, the band has a multitude of songs that everyone already knows, plenty for a two-hour gig. McBroom went on to explain that for some of their more prominent gigs, they hold rehearsals. “It’s a lot of corporate stuff for companies, and then every once and a while like the U-District street fair,” McBroom said. Mostly composed of members from Jazz Band One, the most experienced of Gafield’s Jazz ensembles, they have performed everywhere from Seatac and law firms to college basketball events at the RedHawks Center. They even have an upcoming gig at Climate Pledge Arena. “It’s a cool opportunity to play music for an audience and also get paid for it,” Jazz band member Isabel Dain said. Garfield members of the Jazz band, Wren McIntosh and Bolan Delange, had a lot of good things to say about the program as well. “Live jazz is a lot better than a lot of the stuff you find on Spotify,” Delange said. “A lot of people don’t listen to live jazz or jazz in general and we’re providing the Seattle community with the purest form of it we can,” McIntosh added. Jazz band has been and continues to be a core aspect of the Garfield community, and with impressive upcoming events on the horizon, we’re all excited to see what the future holds.