We congratulate Year 11 student Greer Castle on her recent Jazz Band achievements. Greer performed with two different bands at the Tauranga and Manawatu Jazz festivals this year and has written a piece for us about her experiences:

At the Tauranga Jazz Festival the band won best performance of a New Zealand song for our performance of “Wandering Eye” and we also got gold overall (all of the bands and combos are ranked into categories of bronze, silver, and gold).

At the Manawatu Jazz Festival, the combo that I joined after the Tauranga festival, won best combo for the festival and I won best jazz singer of the festival.

Both of the festivals are really cool immersive events where we get to hear everyone play and showcase their amazing talents. It’s really good for your own personal progression in your selected instrument as we got to see all of the bands get feedback, and sometimes see workshops for some of the top jazz musicians in the country. For example, Rodger Fox. It’s also generally just a really cool opportunity to perform and show what you have been working on. At the end of both festivals we got the privilege of seeing Rodger Fox and his big band perform, which was amazing!

I would also mention that jazz band is a really fun extracurricular, and anyone who is thinking of joining please do. It’s such a great opportunity to meet new people and you get to have amazing performance experiences and make some really cool music! 

Greer Castle