Battle Ground — The American Music Program’s Pacific Crest Jazz Orchestra took home first-place prizes from two competitions recently, one nearby and one from the other side of the country. First, the group of middle and high school students from Battle Ground and Portland won the Charles Mingus Jazz Festival in New York for specialized big band on Feb. 15. They followed that up with a win at the Jazz Forward Big Band competition at Portland State University on Feb. 21. The orchestra will also compete March 27-29 in the Monterey Next Generation Jazz Festival in Monterey, Calif. Later, the band will head back to New York to compete May 7-9 in the Essentially Ellington Jazz Festival. The nonprofit band is led by Grammy winner Thara Memory.
