The Darlington Upper School Jazz Band recently traveled to Cartersville High School for this year’s band evaluation. Each band plays three songs for a panel of judges and is ranked based on the performance.

“We played in front of 3 judges out in the crowd,” said freshman Cooper Laliberte, who plays tenor saxophone in the band. “We played 3 pieces. They were all swing jazz.”

Darlington’s band earned all superior ratings with each piece showing off the band’s talent and hard work.

“It was a lot of work and a lot of practice,” said senior Grant Cross, who also plays the tenor saxophone. “Of course, we play a lot of different genres and a lot of different pieces, and we’ve had a lot of performances. So it was a little bit stressful getting all the pieces together.”  

Cross had previously set expectations on how the jazz band’s performance was going to play out.

“I think we all expected to play really well. With the short preparation of some of our pieces, we were struggling a little bit,” Cross said. “We were prepared for some of our scores to be a tiny bit lower, but we expected to play great and to score high.”

Overall, the students in the band seemed pleased with the results, despite fierce competition.

“There were some other really good bands there,” Julian Lansdell, who plays percussion and piano, said.

Cross was impressed with the band’s performance at the evaluation.

“We played amazingly when it came to performance time,” Cross said.