The Huston-Tillotson Jazz Orchestra finished in third place at the National Collegiate Jazz Competition in New York earlier this month marking a milestone for the program that until four years ago didn't exist.
Huston-Tillotson University was the smallest school selected to perform, the only all-undergraduate band and one of just two historically Black colleges and universities in the running. They were also one of two schools from Texas selected to perform, the other being the University of Texas at Austin.
Jeremy George, Huston-Tillotson’s director of jazz studies, said only 10 bands are selected among hundreds of college jazz programs, many of which have more than 20 years of performance experience.
“I would compare this to college football, [the] national championship,” George said. “But it’s huge, because we were able to build this thing up in four years.”
Huston-Tillotson didn’t have a jazz program until 2022, when George left his job teaching music to Florida high schoolers to take the job at Huston-Tillotson. Before then, George had never heard of the university.
Within four years, George got his students opportunities to play at the Austin City Limits Music Festival and next to Wynton Marsalis at a residency in Virginia. But, he said, being selected to perform at nationals still felt out of reach. Until September, when he got the email.
“I looked at it and I closed my phone. I was like, this can’t be what I read,” he said.
The competition requires each band to play two pieces from Duke Ellington’s catalog, and one piece that is either student-arranged or from the Jazz at Lincoln Center library. Altogether, that adds up to a roughly 18-minute performance.
George and his students started rehearsing in September. At the start of January, the ensemble kicked it into high gear.
"There was no school going on, so we could rehearse ... at 12 a.m. if we wanted to," he said. "Because nobody's here, and they're here, and we could really get together on the music."
Dorian Verner, a third year percussion student, said he has had his eye on this competition for years. He said he rehearsed for it like he was getting ready for battle.
“That was my mindset going into it the whole time, because we were about to be in front of the biggest jazz schools in the nation,” he said. “And coming from Austin, Texas, all the way to New York, like one of the biggest jazz cities in the world.”
Verner said the gravity of the performance didn’t hit him until the next day.
“Sitting and watching and listening to the performance on Sunday, that is probably the best we’ve ever sounded,” he said.
Huston-Tillotson took third place, Michigan State University finished second, and Temple University came out on top.
George said with the third-place win, even though Huston-Tillotson’s jazz program is still comparatively new, he no longer considers them underdogs.
“Technically, we are the third best jazz program in the world. Think of that,” he said. “People know our names now.”
