Canada's largest and longest-running educational jazz event fills a Surrey school with young musicians Friday and Saturday (Feb. 21-22).
More than 2,200 students from 41 schools are involved in the 2025 Surrey Schools International Jazz Festival, at Bell Performing Arts Centre and Sullivan Heights Secondary.
Everybody is welcome to watch and listen to the music free of charge, with donations encouraged to Surrey Schools Meal Program.
Festival participation numbers are up post-COVID, according to Tricia Liversidge, the school district's arts education helping teacher, and the focus is more on music education than competition.
"We had wait lists for every category this year, which is really encouraging, but also a challenge for us," she said. "Music is rebounding."
The school hallways are busy with bands of young musicians hustling from rehearsal rooms to the stage, with photo-op stops along the way.
"They have 25 minutes on stage and then transition to a clinic for 40 minutes with an industry professional and educator. It's a machine," Liversidge noted.
Daytime performances run from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. in several areas of the school.
Friday evening, the theatre stage showcases vocal jazz and rep bands selected from teacher nominations, 7 p.m. start. On Saturday night, the focus shifts to big bands, combos, awards and scholarships during "an evening of celebration and performances by outstanding ensembles."
For 10 years Tony Chamberlist has recorded music at the festival for adjudicators and also band members to hear later, for them to learn what sounded good and what needs work.
"There's some extraordinary young talent there," raved Chamberlist. "I've seen progressively, every year, every program, even the ones that were kind of undernourished, get better and bring in more and more better students.
"When you hear some of these young people performing, you're going, 'Oh my God, these are kids with really advanced ideas that could actually, in a lot of situations, be working pros doing casuals, you know, already."
The roots of the festival date back to 1980 when band teacher Bob LaBonte welcomed young jazz players into the cafeteria of Queen Elizabeth Secondary. Today, the event welcomes student-musicians from throughout the Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island and Fraser Valley.
Not all Surrey secondary schools are represented at the festival, though 21 of them are.
"Not all of the Surrey schools have a jazz program specifically," Liversidge explained, "but I believe all of them have a band program, so it might just be a concert band program, or some might do a School of Rock kind of program that doesn't fit with this festival, which is just jazz-focused."
The festival is the largest of Surrey Schools' arts-focused annual gatherings.
"It's huge, and it takes a lot of organizing to make this happen," Liversidge said. "This festival isn't meant to be a competition, and none of our school events are. My mandate has been to sort of take the push off competition, especially with this one, and make it about celebrating learning — you know, look what (the student-musicians) are able to do and, in some cases, look how far they've come."
Friday and Saturday festival schedules are posted on surreyschools.ca.
Listed in the festival program and on surreyschools.ca, adjudicators and rep band leaders are notable local musicians and educators including Daniel Hersog, Ellen Marple, Casey Thomas-Burns, Cindy Fairbank, Bill Coon, Jodi Proznick, Dawn Pemberton, Steve Maddock, Geeta Das, Craig Scott, Chris Haas, Bob Rebagliati, Brent Taylor, Dennis Esson, Miles Black, Ingrid Stitt and Ben Henriques.
Check the festival program for names of all the rep band musicians, for Junior, Junior-Senior and Senior showcase performances.
