The Francis Howell North Jazz Band is performed a dual concert with the choir at Francis Howell Central on Nov. 26 at 6:30 p.m. for both of their winter concerts. The concert featured the Jazz one and Jazz two groups as well as the choir’s treble chorus, concert choir, Bella Voces and Knightsound. The groups have been working since the beginning weeks of school to prepare for the concert.

“[The toughest part is] I think just getting all of our stuff together,” bass player Grace Sickendick said. “These aren’t the only tunes we’ve been practicing. We have like three other tunes I think, so just putting on the finishing touches. So it’s just making sure everything fits together and it’s not a train wreck.”

The groups, having conflicting concert dates, decided to merge their concerts into one. This caused a seating issue because they had to have space for everyone’s families to watch and enjoy, especially because the choir tends to have more children in the audience.

“Usually the choir program has to bring in another 200 chairs for the audience because our auditorium only seats 300 something, and if we’re gonna combine the choir and jazz concerts we need way more chairs which Francis Howell Central has,” jazz and choir member Robert Fairless said.

The audience’s numbers reflect the effort of the groups on pieces such as Grenada Smoothie, That Which Remains and Gorgeous Gwen. The jazz band not only has the concert pieces to work on, but more pieces that they learn for fun or for future concerts meaning that they have little time to practice their parts. The band has to practice them slowly in chunks, but the pieces, albeit tough, are slowly being conquered by the groups.

“It’s bits and pieces then you have those parts where it’s like, ‘Oh, we actually can play this,” said Sickendick