Bringing the Enjoy Jazz School Big Band to life in 2012 was an integral part of the Festival’s mission to promote young talents with BASF funding. The Enjoy Jazz School Big Band regularly brings together the best talents aged between 13 and 18 years from the school big bands of the Heidelberg St. Raphael Gymnasiums, the Mannheim Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Gymnasium and the Ludwigshafen Max-Planck-Gymnasium. School big bands are naturally fragile and highly dynamic ensembles with consistently changing line-ups, but the Enjoy Jazz School Big Band has managed to be part of the festival every year since 2012. The ensemble plays classical big band standards and ventures creatively into increasingly complex contemporary material. The programme had not yet been completed at the time of printing the 2017 programme, but nonetheless, the Enjoy Jazz School Big Band is an official part of the Festival. A little bird told us that they may be getting an Oasis song to swing, and there has also been talk of Bruno Mars because the band has some highly interesting vocalists. Besides this, there are a few surprises and ambitious arrangements in store.
