Sjz High School All Stars Ft. Gretchen Parlarto at San Jose Jazz Summer Fest

About

Now in its 27th season, the San Jose Jazz High School All Stars Big Band brings together the Bay Area’s most talented high school musicians for pre-professional training in improvisation, theory, composition and jazz history. After HSAS opened for her concert, NEA Jazz Master Dee Dee Bridgewater said it best: “They were fantastic!” Directed by saxophonist Oscar Pangilinan, the group performs in professional venues throughout the region and has graced the stages of the San Jose Jazz Summer Fest, the Monterey Jazz Festival and the Monterey Next Generation Jazz Festival, among others. Recent HSAS graduates have gone on to music programs at NYU, USC, Eastman, Oberlin and beyond. The HSAS U19s small combo will also perform at the SJZ Break Room Stage on Sunday, August 9 at 2pm. Pangilinan, a San Jose native raised in the Alum Rock neighborhood, earned his degree in jazz studies at San Jose State University before becoming one of the Bay Area’s leading music educators. In addition to directing HSAS, he leads San Jose Jazz’s Summer Jazz Camp and has taught in the SJZ Progressions Program, Alum Rock Union School District and Santa Clara Unified. He toured Asia in 2018–19 with the SJZ Collective, with stops at the Hong Kong International Jazz Festival and the Blue Note in Taipei.