Jazz Ensemble Festival Sheet Music

The Chicken by Alfred James Ellis remains the most widely adopted title here, followed by Work Song (Nat Adderley) and Whiplash (Hank Levy). Teachers also regularly choose Groove Merchant by Jerome Richardson as a Grade 2 entry point and Things Ain't What They Used to Be, arranged by Alan Baylock, as a reliable Grade 3 workhorse for both learning and festival performance.

Alan Baylock directs the Grammy-nominated One O'Clock Lab Band at the University of North Texas and spent 20 years as Chief Arranger for the U.S. Air Force Band's Airmen of Note. His arrangement of Things Ain't What They Used to Be is one of the best-selling titles in this collection and exemplifies his reputation for writing accessible yet musically substantial charts.

Kris Berg is Director of Jazz Studies at Collin County Community College and founder of the Collin Jazz Fest and Texas All-Star Jazz Camp. His ensembles have earned multiple invitations to Montreux, and his arrangement of The Chicken (the single most popular title here) has established him as a prolific big band arranger whose work circulates worldwide.

Erik Morales brings a background across classical, jazz, and commercial genres, with over 150 published works. His arrangement of Work Song exemplifies his gift for melodic clarity and harmonic sophistication, and it consistently ranks among teachers' top choices for Grade 3 ensembles.

Gordon Goodwin started composing full orchestrations at age five and wrote his first big band chart at thirteen. His prolific output of 46 titles in this collection, anchored by The Jazz Police, reflects his three Emmy awards and decades working in television and film, where he learned to write for immediate impact and repeatability.