Jazz Nutcracker hits goals for jazz education, homeless teens
Mayor Bruce Harrell, and his wife, Joanne, pictured with some of our student leaders and directors, joined Roosevelt Jazz at its 25th anniversary performance of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s Nutcracker Suite.
The season’s three concerts exceeded the financial goal, raising $48,200 for Roosevelt High School’s jazz education program and an additional $4,000 for Teen Feed, a nonprofit that serves meals nightly to unsheltered youth. The Teen Feed fundraiser has been matched 1:1, an offer that’s been extended until Dec. 31, 2024.
Teen Feed donation: A gift of shelter and food
Roosevelt Jazz Booster Club recognizes that there is a hierarchy of need. Teen Feed seeks to fill the basic and fundamental. Roosevelt Jazz seeks to enhance and supplement it.
The partnership between Roosevelt Jazz and Teen Feed represents a powerful confluence of two organizations’ missions to support youth. While Teen Feed meets fundamental youth welfare needs, Roosevelt Jazz enriches young lives through the transformative power of music—together creating a comprehensive approach to youth support.
We are grateful to our concert-goers for joining us in supporting our community’s most vulnerable teens and young adults. If you’ve not yet done so, we urge you to support Teen Feed and have your donation matched 1:1 through Dec. 31.
25th anniversary season a holiday blast!
For decades, Roosevelt High School’s jazz program has embraced a unique musical challenge that sets it apart from other school ensembles: Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s revolutionary Nutcracker Suite. The Nutcracker Suite combines recognizable Tchaikovsky themes with jazz mastery, creating a unique educational and artistic challenge for generations of our students.
Under the direction of Hannah Mowry, this year’s performances included the nationally acclaimed Jazz Band 1 sharing the Nutcracker Suite with Jazz Bands 2 and 3, while Roosevelt Vocal Jazz opened each act with classic holiday carols.
The decision to include all four ensembles ensured that more than 90 high-school musicians would join in and learn from this cherished Seattle tradition. Preparation and performance was a journey of artistic discovery that challenged our student musicians to push beyond their comfort zones while celebrating a quintessentially American art form.
Jazz education outreach: More than 1,700 kids enjoy school-day concerts
This year more than 1,700 elementary and middle-school students enjoyed a shortened version of the Jazz Nutcracker on Dec. 5-6, 2024, and for many it was their first live jazz concert. The two days of free, school-day concerts offered to 18 Seattle public schools is an annual gift from Roosevelt Jazz to the community. The 2024 concerts were the most ambitious youth outreach in a decade.
Roosevelt’s Jazz Nutcracker has played an outsized role in the musical journey of a number of our student musicians who credit their attendance at past Jazz Nutcracker concerts in elementary school as their inspiration to learn to play jazz.
This year’s celebration extended beyond the music with a festive holiday marketplace and activities before each concert and during intermission. Concertgoers explored an instrument petting zoo, took photos with costumed Nutcracker characters, enjoyed holiday crafts, and purchased commemorative merchandise, poinsettias, and seasonal treats. Seattle’s mayor is pictured below with some of our live characters—Rat King, a Rough Rider Nutcracker, and the Sugar Plum Fairy—and a photo from the theater stuffed with elementary and middle-school students waiting for the show to begin.
All photos by Roosevelt Jazz parent volunteers Josh Sternberg, Amy Piper, and Jen McCormick.
Roosevelt Jazz donation: A gift of music
Seattle Public Schools is in a budget crisis, and the arts are often the first to be cut. This year Roosevelt High School lost its choir teacher, which meant that Roosevelt Jazz lost its vocal jazz director. But the Roosevelt Jazz Booster Club is raising more money and has hired a new vocal jazz director whose inspiration and enthusiasm has already helped to double the ensemble’s size!
If you attended the Jazz Nutcracker, you’re helping us bridge the financial gap. Thank you! Here are two more ways you can continue to make a difference:
1. Make a one-time gift or a recurring donation
- $10 pays for mouthpiece sanitizing spray
- $100 buys a new chart that expands and diversifies our music library
- $150 repairs a school instrument
2. Become a Roosevelt Jazz sponsor
Sponsors are friends and families of our student musicians, local businesses, Roosevelt Jazz alumni, and lovers of jazz worldwide. You provide critical financial backing or in-kind donations that, alongside volunteering, make it possible to offer a high-quality jazz education in a public school. A sponsor helps to:
- Pay the registration at a jazz festival ($250 to $600)
- Provide a student’s airfare to that festival ($500)
- Supplement the cost of one student’s jazz education for a year ($2,800)
- Contribute to a director’s annual stipend to teach an ensemble of 25 students ($16,500)
In return, a sponsor knows their dollars are supporting local high-school musicians who are nationally recognized, reaching large audiences year-round, and able to target a community that values music education and charitable giving.
The Roosevelt High School jazz program is led by Seattle public school teacher Hannah Mowry, the director of Jazz Band 1. The three remaining ensembles are directed by professional musicians and educators contracted by the Roosevelt Jazz Booster Club. The directors are Michael Van Bebber with Jazz Band 2, Deb Schaaf with Jazz Band 3, and Rebecca Woodbury with Vocal Jazz. The program receives financial, logistical, and creative support from the Roosevelt Jazz Booster Club, an all-volunteer nonprofit comprised of parents and guardians of our student musicians.
