BERKELEY HIGH JAZZ ENSEMBLE

This show will feature the Berkeley High Jazz Ensemble, the renowned program’s flagship big-band. The Ensemble has launched some of the most celebrated jazz talent of the past three decades, including Joshua Redman, Benny Green, Ambrose Akinmusire, and many others. Past Ensembles have won top prizes at jazz festivals including NextGen Monterey, Reno, Santa Cruz, and the Charles Mingus Festival in New York. The Berkeley High School Jazz Program includes five big bands and a dozen student-led combos. The Ensemble (and more recently, additional students) have traveled with the program to Montreux, Japan, and Cuba.

Since 2011, Sarah Cline has directed the Berkeley High School Jazz Program, a premier jazz program known nationally and internationally as an incubator of talent and a citadel of swing. Her students regularly represent at high level festivals, and get into top flight college music programs. During her time at Berkeley High, she has led four tours to Cuba, collaborating with La Escuela Nacional de la Musica in Havana. Sarah is the founder of JazzGirls Day, an event that now is spreading to communities across the US that encourages young women to see a place for themselves in the world of jazz. In addition to her teaching duties, Sarah is an in-demand professional trombonist in the San Francisco Bay Area in both jazz and salsa bands.