by Eric Martinez | staff writer

Aiden Sutherland plays his trumpet attentively as he prepares for band practice that morning. He is also a part of the jazz band, a school club that competes in and around San Antonio. Recently they have made it to the Fredericksburg Jazz Festival and won first out of many schools.

“It was pretty cool. Johnson has ever really had a good Jazz Band until the past couple years and that’s because Mr. Sharpe and the number of young players that are really good just keep on rising,” senior Aiden Sutherland said.

Johnson competed against many schools that had more time to practice or had classes dedicated to jazz band.

“Honestly some of the best jazz schools go to these competition and rehearse every day, and we only rehearse once a week so us winning felt really good,” Sutherland said.

Johnson jazz band also went to the Taft Jazz Festival and won first place in both second band and first band. They also went to the 51st Texas A&M Kingsville Jazz Festival where second jazz band placed first and first band placed second. 

“We’ve placed pretty high every time, like the second jazz band we got first or second at the kingsville competition and then we got really high at Taft. I think the first Jazz band almost got first in Kingsville and they got grand champion at Taft,” freshman Carson Payne said.

The Jjazz band will be having an end of the year performance on May 31 to celebrate their achievements for the 2018-2019 school year.

“We kind of play a lot of everything. We play big band music, some latin jazz, we play some ballads. Pretty much everything,” Sutherland said.