Director Information
Thank you for participating in the third annual Northwest Blue Note Jazz Festival! We recognize how precious your time is, and we look forward to providing a great experience for you and your students.
This page include all the information you need to navigate your day on Saturday. If you still have questions once you get through this packet, please feel free to contact either of us at any time. We’re happy to help!
Festival Schedule
The 2025 Northwest Blue Note Jazz Festival features 45 bands competing in six classes: 1A, 2A, 3A, 4A, Second Bands, and Middle School/Junior High. As we put the schedule together, our primary consideration was to make sure that all students from a particular school and feeder pattern would be able to listen to and support each other. This philosophy is something about which we feel strongly, and something that will continue to drive our festival scheduling in the future.
Our festival features three different performance venues. 3A and 4A bands will perform in our 1,000-seat auditorium. 1A, 2A, and Middle School bands will perform in our Black Box Theater, and all second bands will perform in our north band room. Each of these venues will provide a great performance space for your bands. Maps to each of the centers can be found below.
The complete schedule for the day can be found by clicking on this link.
Bus Unloading and Parking
Buses should enter Northwest from 10th Street on the west side of the high school. Turn onto NW Stratford Drive at the traffic light, follow it past the tennis courts, and then turn left along the west side of the building. Unload into the west-facing doors next to the daycare playground. Once empty, buses may park on the far west side of the lot to the north of Stratford. A parking map of Northwest High School can be found here.
Band Host
Each ensemble will be assigned a band host who will be your liaison throughout the day to answer any questions or help deal with any last minute emergencies. Your host will meet you at the west doors upon your arrival. This will serve as your check-in for the festival. Your host will escort your group to your homeroom and later to your warm-up room.
Required Forms
Please bring two (2) copies of the Personnel and Soloist form with you to the competition. Your band host will collect these from you on the way to your warm-up center. Both required forms can be found here. Be sure to complete and print both the Personnel Tab and the Soloist Tab.
Homerooms
Your assigned homeroom is yours to use throughout the day. While these rooms are safe, neither the Northwest band nor Northwest High School will be monitoring the rooms, and we will not be responsible for any lost or stolen items. Please be smart about what you and your students choose to bring with you to the festival. Also, we ask that your students be respectful of the homerooms and our facility throughout the day, and treat the rooms and furniture accordingly. A list of your assigned homeroom can be found here.
Warm-up
Ten minutes prior to your warm-up time, your band host will escort your group from the homeroom to the warm-up room. At this time, they will also collect your Roster and Soloist forms for the judges. You will have 30 minutes to warm-up the group. Each warm-up room will be equipped with a full standard rhythm section (see Equipment below). The warm-up room monitor will tell you when there are both five minutes and two minutes remaining before it is time to move to the performance venue.
If you are performing in the 1A/2A/Middle School Center, please note that your warm up will be on the ground floor in the media center, and your performance will be on the second floor in the Black Box Theater. You will use the stairs inside the media center to travel between your warm up and your performance.
If you are performing in either Center 1 (the Auditorium - 3A/4A) or Center 2 (the north band room - Second Bands), please follow the traffic flow signs posted around the warm up areas to ease congestion in the hallways.
Performance - Adjudication & Clinic
Ten minutes before your performance time, you will move out of the warm-up room and into the staging area. Once the performance area is clear, you will be free to take the stage. Each group will have a total of 40 minutes on stage in which to set-up, perform, and receive an onstage clinic. You are free to use this time however you choose, however please realize that a longer performance will result in a shorter clinic and vice versa.
After you are set up and ready to perform, the announcer will introduce your group, at which point you are free to perform. Once your performance has concluded, the two adjudicators will join you on stage and work with your students for the remainder of your time. Please have scores available for the clinicians.
Microphones and Sound
Each performance venue will have a person monitoring the soundboard throughout your performance. They will do the best they can to make sure that soloist levels are appropriate for your performance. If you would like to have your own person run the soundboard, you are welcome to do so. The soundboard for the auditorium is located on the stage left/audience right side of the balcony, and can only be accessed from the second floor, so please allow extra time for that person to reach the soundboard. The soundboard for the Black Box Theater is located to the stage left side of the Black Box one story above the floor. This soundboard is also accessed through the balcony of the auditorium. Signs will be posted to help guide directors to the soundboard in both venues. The sound board for the band room will be in the back of the center.
Improvisation and Rhythm Section Clinics
We are excited to offer three levels of targeted improvisation instruction to your students at our festival. We are also offering a fourth center specifically geared towards the rhythm section. After your band’s performance, your students will attend a thirty-minute clinic in one of the following four centers:
Beginning Improvisation (upstairs overlooking the commons): This center is geared towards students who are either new to or uncomfortable with improvisation. In this center, students will work on fundamental concepts of melody, time, and rhythm, helping them to find success with basic improvisation.
Intermediate Improvisation (downstairs, room B108): This center is geared towards students who are comfortable improvising on simplistic or common forms, like the blues or modal music. Here, students will work to develop their concept of form and melodic line within the context of a blues.
Advanced Improvisation (downstairs, room B132): This center is geared towards students who are comfortable playing changes on a variety of standards. The direction of this center will largely be dictated by the students in each session.
Rhythm Section (south band room, room A232): This center is for all rhythm section players. Students will talk about rhythm section specific concepts including everything from physical setup to musical roles and responsibilities to interaction and musicality.
Please have a discussion with your students prior to arriving at the festival about these four clinics to determine which is most appropriate for each student, and where that center is located. Students will go to their clinic immediately after your performance and will not return to their homeroom until the clinic is over.
Traffic Flow Around the School
In order to ensure that all of our performing groups and spectators are able to efficiently move around the warm-up rooms and performance centers, we have established traffic lanes for all 3A/4A bands, second bands and spectators, and anyone going to the Rhythm Section clinic (south band room). If you or your students fall into one of those groups, please be sure to follow the posted signs and stay to the appropriate side of the stanchions.
Equipment
Northwest will provide basic rhythm section gear in each warm-up room and each performance venue. Not only will this save you time and hassle as you travel, but it will help the festival run more smoothly. While the equipment in each site will be slightly different, each warm-up room and performance room will have the following:
A vibraphone
A guitar amp
A grand piano or Yamaha Clavinova
A bass amp
A four piece drum set, including snare, high tom, floor tom, and bass drum, along with a hi-hat and three different cymbals (two in the warm-up rooms)
Four microphones for soloists
30 music stands
20 Wenger posture chairs
16” risers for trumpets (in performance venues only)
8” risers for trombones (in performance venues only)
While you are welcome to bring your own cymbals to change out for your performance, we ask that you use our rhythm gear for everything else. Anything that you need for your performance that is not listed above will be your responsibility to provide. If you have specific questions about any of the above equipment, please ask.
Ballots and Awards
Our festival will use the Iowa Jazz Championship ballots for all classes. These ballots award 30 points for Brass and Woodwinds, 30 points for Rhythm Section, 30 points for Improvisation and Solos, and 10 points for Programming.
The awards ceremony for all classes will be held in the auditorium at 8:30 p.m. The top three finishers in each class will receive plaques. Any student who is recognized by a judge as an outstanding performer will be given a certificate in the director’s packet, which you can pick up from the office at the end of the day. A list of outstanding performers can be found on the Outstanding Performers page.
Competition Suite
We will utilize Competition Suite for all feedback and scoring for the festival. No written feedback will be provided, except in the case of an emergency (e.g., technology failure). As soon the adjudicator completes their commentary, it will be pushed to your Competition Suite account and available for your review. We recommend having the Competition Suite app on a phone for easy access, but all commentary is also available on CompetitionSuite.com.
All groups have already been added to Competition Suite using the director email address provided at registration. If you have not used Competition Suite before, you will need to visit CompetitionSuite.com prior to the day of the festival and create an account using the email address you registered with. If you would like other staff or directors added to your group, you can easily add them via the website. If you have any questions or encounter any problems with Competition Suite, feel free to reach out to us and we will assist in any way we can.
Copyright Compliance
Prior to attending our festival, please register your literature through the National Federation of State High School Associations website. To do so, visit www.nfhs.org and click on Copyright Compliance under the Resource tab. Add Northwest Blue Note Jazz Festival to your list of attending events and make sure that you have uploaded permissions for all of the pieces you are planning to perform. For more detailed instructions on how to complete this process, click here.
Concessions
We invite you and your students to take advantage of our concession stand. We will offer a variety of breakfast and lunch foods as well as snacks throughout the day. A complete menu can be found here. We thank you for your support of the festival!
Director and Driver Lounge
In addition to our main cafeteria food, we will also have a Director and Bus Driver Lounge. Located down the hallway towards the 3A/4A and second band warm-up rooms, this lounge will have coffee and bagels available in the morning, along with sandwich wraps and small desserts available starting around 11:00. We will also have a variety of soft drinks and water available throughout the day.
Spectator Parking and Admission
Spectators should plan to park in the parking lot immediately south of the school, east of the stadium. This lot can be accessed from NW Sunrise Drive, which runs between 6th and 10th streets on the south side of the school.
Admission for the festival is $15 for adults and $10 for K-12 students. Tickets may be purchased at the door with a credit card, but spectators are encouraged to pre-order their tickets by going to https://www.vancoevents.com/us/CXHM. Please note: cash is not accepted for events at Northwest High School.
T-Shirts
We are again excited to offer festival t-shirts for you and your students. The shirt will include our 2025 Blue Note Festival logo with the names of the participating schools on the back. Pre-order cost is $20. If your students would like to pre-order a t-shirt, please fill out the form attached to the back of this document and return it by Friday, February 21. Remaining shirts will be sold at the festival for $25 while supplies last.
Payment
Registration fee for the Northwest Blue Note Jazz Festival is $200 per ensemble. If you have yet to submit your registration, please do so at your earliest convenience.
Questions?
If you have any questions about our festival, please feel free to reach out at any time. We are thrilled you have decided to spend your Saturday with us. Please let us know if there is anything we can do to make this day run a little smoother.