The jazz band traveled to Georgia to compete in the Jazz Central Swing portion of the Savannah Music Festival.
Twelve high school jazz bands will compete for three finalist positions and these finalists choose one piece to compete for first place.“When we decided as a group that we wanted to audition for this, we were sent a piece called ‘Night Train,’ and you work on this piece over and over and over again, you get it as close to perfect as you can,” senior Scarlett Jackson said.
The band worked closely with Mr. Dickerson and the A3 house to record the highest quality audio files and perfect their sound.
“We then set [the audio files] off to Savannah, Georgia along with thousands of other schools, public schools, private schools, magnet schools for the arts, and all kinds of schools and people just sat there and listened to every single one and picked twelve that they liked.”
“It was a great honor; we didn’t think we’d make it because we had listened to the past bands online and they were ridiculously good. It was really special,” Senior Cole Martin said.
Regardless of how difficult it was that they were able to qualify for such a prestigious event, the trip to Savannah costs Albemarle $15,000. To take part in this trip, the jazz band has had to put out a massive effort in raising money.
“There have been a lot of generous people who have donated to our gofundme.com account, but we’ve also played gigs at The Southern and tickets for that were, like, $25,” Jackson said.
The band additionally decided to put on a Valentine’s Day Jazz Band dance this year to raise more funds. Even though they only charged $5 per ticket, they ended up raising around $2,000 in just the one night. By far the largest contribution the band received was from a scholarship through a Dave Matthews band sponsored foundation, the Bama Works Foundation. This foundation alone gave the jazz band $10,000 for the trip. After all their work, the band surpassed their original target of $15,000 and achieved their goal of being able to finance their trip.

The band left Albemarle for Savannah, George after school on March 29, and performed until April 1.