Earshot Jazz

Bothell High School Jazz Band directed by Philip Dean. Photo by Gilberto Tadday, Jazz at Lincoln Center It’s almost a cliché at this point to note that the PNW has one of the highest concentrations of high school jazz talent in the U.S. And, since 1996, the proving ground for top-tier high school jazz has been Jazz at Lincoln Center’s (JALC) Essentially Ellington(EE) festival.

Type 85 photo courtesy of the artists. (L-R): Matt Dunn, Sam Clewans, Jon Butler, and Riley Wilkins BY ERIC OLSON “Fusion is kind of a blanket word for what we’re doing,” says bassist Matt Dunn, settling in for evening practice in drummer Sam Clewans’s Madison Valley basement. “But we’re open for feedback.

Jean-Paul Builes BY ERIC OLSON I’m shooting the breeze with pianist/organist Ron Weinstein when he delivers a precious bit of lore. “I was gigging at Vito’s when the fire started,” he says, kicked back with partner Dillyn Kost on their South Seattle couch. “That building’s fire alarm was always going off. So we usually ignored it.

Jean-Paul Builes photo by Jake Hanson BY ERIC OLSON In 2021, as a reliably drab spring burst into summertime and newly vaccinated Seattleites eked free of winter’s many confinements, I found myself at a July Fourth celebration on the southern banks of the Duwamish River, at a house which residents of that neighborhood know perhaps too well.