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I just don't think you can lose with jazz as it is. All of those components of American culture and artistic culture.
Plus, the creativity of the improvisational part of jazz, I think, lent to some of the excitable style of music where you stand up and take a solo
and you don't know until that very moment what you're going to play. You've got to realize how important jazz is
to American history. I mean, it's an important part of our culture. It's one of the humanly indigenous styles of music
as well as art that America can claim for itself. It was invented here; it could've only been invented here because of all the cultures
and ethnicities that it entails, but it also is an exciting style of music that's fun to learn. I mean, for one thing, the ensemble is smaller,
so students that are in jazz usually have more responsibilities to make sure their part is right, because it's not like we have
in concert band where we have 12 to 16 clarinets, you know, you have 5 saxophones and each of those saxophones has their own
individual parts that they're responsible for. They just-- everywhere all I get is: what a great event it is and how smooth it's run,
and I just keep saying it gets better and better every year but I just think the students run this thing and it's owned by the Clark band
students and I just think the pride that they take in it and ownership that they take in it, because it's owned by them, is what makes the festival run so smoothly.