Ms. Stockhouse reports that our students performed magnificently at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival! Out of some 200 high schools from the Western U.S. plus provinces in Canada and even Alaska, Bloomington North had 4 of the top 12 Outstanding Soloists of the festival. These students were announced and honored in front of 20,000 people at the final concert and invited to perform at "Hamp's Club" on Saturday night. The award winning students from Bloomington HS North were: Sadie Johnson (guitar), Evan Main (piano), and Chris Parker (on BOTH tenor saxophone and drums). In addition, Honorable Mentions were awarded to vocal soloist Lydia Elmer, trumpet soloist David Burke, and a combo composed of Sadie Johnson, Lydia Elmer, Samantha Johnson, Evan Main and Chris Parker.

Here are links to a few pictures image1 , image2, and image3. We'll post more on this website in the photo albums soon!
And here's a video of Chris Parker and Sadie Johnson performing at the evening Hamp's Club Concert : YouTube video.

This was the 46th Annual Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival, a huge event hosted each year by the University of Idaho. BHS North alum Sara Caswell was a featured artist on the main stage on Friday night and really brought down the house. She paid a special tribute to BHSN, by the way. The North group also crossed paths with several IU Jazz department grads who are now teaching at colleges in the West. The Bloomington/IU reputation is alive and well.

Other North students who attended turned in strong performances also - Miro Sobrer, Stefan Lenthe, Ian VanArsdel, Tai Mikulecky, Hans Riess, Chris Alexeev, Evan Graham, Dhruv Shankar, and Aurora Detor.

On Sunday, the trip included a chance for everyone to go skiing or snowboarding! Unfortunately flights were cancelled early Monday morning due to bad weather, so half the party was rebooked to return very late on Monday night, the other half on Tuesday night.