Palace City Jazz Festival

01/18/2024

Check out our amazing clinicians for the 2024 Palace City Jazz Festival!

12/08/2022

Check out our FABULOUS line up of clinicians for 2023! This is always one of our favorite days of the year! Make plans to check out the final concert on Feb 7th at the PAC!

01/11/2022

The evening concert is shaping up to be pretty amazing! You can get your tickets the night of the show in our box office of the MHS Performing Arts Center. Concert will feature our middle school jazz band, newly created Jazz 2 and MHS Jazz I featuring our guest artists below! Its always an amazing night!

12/20/2021

Check out our 2022 Guest Artist Line Up! Its going to be a great event!

02/13/2020

What an amazing day hosting the 12th Annual Palace City Jazz Festival at the PAC! So many things to be thankful for and people to thank! First off...thanks to my amazing jazz band parents for helping run such a smooth event. Thanks Denise Burns Van Meter for your help chairing the event...you are awesome! Thanks to all the directors that bring students every year...I hope it was educational and inspiring! Thanks to our amazing clinicians that made the day so special...Tom, Annie, John, Steve, Joel and Andrew...you guys rock! So thankful for my middle school and high school jazz band...you guys we’re amazing and I’m so proud! Great day!

02/11/2020

We have had a blast sharing the love of jazz with hundreds of students from the area today at the Palace City Jazz Festival today! Tonight - don’t miss our amazingly talented Mitchell kids at the evening concert. Show starts at 7pm at the PAC!

02/09/2020

In two short days, we will be hosting 18 schools from the surrounding area with over 400 jazz students on our campus at the MHS Performing Arts Center. These musicians will be performing for our amazing clinicians and getting feedback to take back home to their programs. In addition to the instruction, they will also be experiencing workshops on the various instruments of the jazz band, a jam session and also clinics on improvisation! At 7:00PM, we will be presenting our final evening concert where you will hear from our newly created jazz combo, the wonderfully talented middle school jazz band, O'Gorman High School's Jazz Band and also our very own high school jazz band featuring the clinicians from the festival. Tickets can be purchased that evening at the box office and are $5 for students and $10 for adults! Its an amazing night of great music! Dont miss it!

02/11/2019

It’s getting close to the big event! Remember - you can get your tickets at the door on Tuesday night ($10 for adults and $5 for students). You will hear both the middle school and high school jazz bands play with our INCREDIBLE line up of clinicians! We are also asking the talented Brookings High School Jazz Band under the direction of Ron Stary to join us! It’s going to be a fabulous night of music...come check it out!

02/01/2019

Have you heard Rex Richardson play? Plenty of stuff on Youtube as he is one of the busiest trumpet players in the world right now! Here he is playing with another highly recognized trumpet player - Allen Vizzutti!

Allen Vizzutti and Rex Richardson play "Blues for Laura" with the Slovenian State Theater Orchestra in Maribor. The performance, from December 2009, is the 1...

02/01/2019

If you haven't heard Kate Skinner play yet, you are going to amazed on Feb 12th...shes pretty amazing!

A little post-concert office session. Music: T. Monk. Lyrics: J. Hendricks.

01/10/2019

Introducing 2019 Palace City Jazz Festival Clinician Rex Richardson. Hailed in classical circles as “among the very best trumpet soloists in the world today,” (International Trumpet Guild) and “One of the finest virtuosos of our time” (The Brass Herald) and in jazz as “a standout soloist with the power, range and flexibility to rival Freddie Hubbard and Woody Shaw,” (DownBeatMagazine) Yamaha Performing Artist Rex Richardsonwas named the 2008 Brass Herald Personality of the Year.

A veteran of the acclaimed chamber ensemble Rhythm & Brass, jazz legend Joe Henderson’s Quintet and Sextet, William Russo’s Chicago Jazz Ensemble, and the Brass Band of Battle Creek, known as the world’s “Rolls Royce of Brass Bands” (Brass Band World), he stays busy as a headline artist at international brass and jazz festivals and as a soloist with orchestras, concert bands, brass bands and jazz ensembles on five continents. These ensembles have ranged from the Phoenix Symphony to the U.S. Army Field Band, and from England’s Fodens Brass Band to the U.S. Air Force’s Airmen of Note Jazz Ensemble.

Style Weeklycalled Richardson “One of the world’s most engaging and astonishingly versatile trumpeters.” A tireless champion of new music and an advocate of improvisation in classical as well as jazz settings, he has presented the premiere performances of genre-bending concertos by Peter Meechan, Anthony Plog, Doug Richards, David Sampson, Andy Scott, James Stephenson, Allen Vizzutti, and Dana Wilson in over twenty-five countries on five continents since 2006.

Richardson’s nine solo recordings, including the 2010 release Magnum Opus: 21st Century Trumpet Concertosare all released on Summit Records. His most recent, Freedom of Movement: 21stCentury Trumpet Concertos,featuring the new works by Plog, Scott, Stephenson and Vizzutti, was released in May to rave reviews.

Richardson has degrees in anthropology and music from Northwestern and Louisiana State and has taught at Virginia Commonwealth University since 2002. He served as International Tutor in Trumpet at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, U.K. from 2012-2015. In 2018 he was appointed International Tutor in Trumpet at JAM Music Lab University in Vienna, Austria.