Roosevelt Jazz proudly presents its 25th anniversary of the Jazz Nutcracker by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, who transformed the Tchaikovsky ballet into a new and strikingly American piece of work that has challenged and inspired generations of our musicians.
In the spirit of community giving, the Roosevelt Jazz Booster Club is partnering with Teen Feed, a local nonprofit supporting unsheltered Seattle youth with basic needs. Read on to discover other ways to help, but here’s one easy thing you can do today:
ROUND-UP YOUR TICKET PURCHASE
Roosevelt Jazz encourages concertgoers to add a $5 donation to Teen Feed when purchasing a ticket. Thank you for supporting both jazz education and our most vulnerable youth and young adults.
This year’s celebration extends beyond the music with a festive holiday marketplace and activities before each concert and during intermission. Concertgoers can explore an instrument petting zoo, take photos with costumed Nutcracker characters, enjoy holiday crafts, and purchase commemorative merchandise, poinsettias, and seasonal treats.
Stage Poinsettia
$20-$30
Take home a gorgeous poinsettia from Swansons Nursery. Available at Sunday, Dec. 8 matinee.
Proceeds will benefit Roosevelt Jazz student musicians, its three big bands, and vocal ensemble. Your purchases help pay for instrument repair, sheet music, director and clinician stipends, festival fees and their associated travel.
Concert raffle for Teen Feed
Winners drawn Dec. 8. Prizes include:
Live show by a Roosevelt Jazz combo
2025 Starbucks Hot Java Cool Jazz concert tickets
Custom potted plant arrangement by Swansons Nursery
Winter gear drive
On behalf of Teen Feed, we are collecting jackets and raincoats, blankets and sleeping bags, hats and gloves at all Jazz Nutcracker shows.
Our mission: Teaching jazz in a public high school
Who we are
Roosevelt Jazz offers a jazz education that rivals the best programs in the world.
Our alumni attend top music conservatories and universities.
Notables include a GRAMMY vocalist, a trumpeter who recorded on 5 GRAMMY records, a drummer who performed with Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift, a trombonist who worked with Fleet Foxes, and a bassist who played with Beyoncé.
Who we serve
Our student musicians are passionate about performing and honing their skills. As a competitive program, we foster a spirit of excellence that runs deep. We hope our students:
Develop skills like grit, empathy, how to overcome failure, and to work as a team.
How we do it
Roosevelt Jazz is supported by a booster club and folks like you. We receive donations from Roosevelt High School families, friends and neighbors, alumni, small businesses, and lovers of jazz worldwide! Roosevelt High School provides classroom instruction, rehearsal space, and administrative support. We are grateful for its contribution and yours.
Thank you.
More about the Jazz Nutcracker
Listen to one of our first recorded performances—live from 2003
Roosevelt Jazz has performed at prestigious festivals worldwide, including multiple appearances at the Essentially Ellington competition, where it achieved four consecutive wins in the early 2000s. Enjoy one of our first recorded Jazz Nutcracker shows—live from 2003, a period of remarkable creativity and success in a program known for its showmanship and musicality.
Same setlist every year? Yes. Er, no?
Roosevelt Jazz Director Emeritus Scott Brown on why the Suite’s sound and swing shift with students
Every year brings new hurdles as the program adapts the performance to its current members. And every year comes with a series of questions, Mr. Brown said.
Will we have a lead trumpet player who can cover the range?
Is there a tenor sax player with the swagger needed to nail the sultry solo in “Sugar Rum Cherry”?
Will they be able to pull-off the beautiful, but very demanding, “Midnight Stroll”?
How will I, as director, adapt and teach the music in a responsible way, so as to make it work for everyone in the band?
How will you, as students, rise to this challenge?
A cardboard box filled with rare copies of Billy Strayhorn’s Nutcracker transcriptions
It began with a Dutch jazz scholar’s manuscript and a cardboard box that arrived at Roosevelt High School just one month before the first performance. Inside the box were arguably the most impressive arrangements from this period in Strayhorn’s creativity.
Student artist reveals the inspiration for her Roosevelt Rough Rider Nutcracker characters
“I filled close to 10 sketchbook pages with sketches of the nutcracker, rat king, and sugar plum fairy,” artist and drummer Momoko Heaton said. “The most challenging part was figuring out how to make each character unique while maintaining cohesion with the others and the overall poster design.”
Roosevelt Director of Bands Hannah Mowry invites 70 additional Roosevelt musicians and vocalists to share in the experience
Now under the direction of Hannah Mowry, this year’s performance will expand to include Jazz Bands 2 and 3, along with holiday tunes performed by Roosevelt Vocal Jazz. The decision to include all four ensembles ensures that everyone can participate in and learn from this beloved tradition while the program maintains its high standards. The piece combines recognizable Tchaikovsky themes with jazz mastery, creating a unique educational and artistic challenge for students.
Proceeds will benefit Roosevelt Jazz student musicians, its three big bands, and vocal ensemble. Your purchases help pay for instrument repair, sheet music, director and clinician stipends, festival fees and their associated travel.
Concert raffle for Teen Feed
Winners drawn Dec. 8. Prizes include:
Live show by a Roosevelt Jazz combo
2025 Starbucks Hot Java Cool Jazz concert tickets
Custom potted plant arrangement by Swansons Nursery
Winter gear drive
On behalf of Teen Feed, we are collecting jackets and raincoats, blankets and sleeping bags, hats and gloves at all Jazz Nutcracker shows.
Our mission: Teaching jazz in a public high school
Who we are
Roosevelt Jazz offers a jazz education that rivals the best programs in the world.
Our alumni attend top music conservatories and universities.
Notables include a GRAMMY vocalist, a trumpeter who recorded on 5 GRAMMY records, a drummer who performed with Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift, a trombonist who worked with Fleet Foxes, and a bassist who played with Beyoncé.
Who we serve
Our student musicians are passionate about performing and honing their skills. As a competitive program, we foster a spirit of excellence that runs deep. We hope our students:
Develop skills like grit, empathy, how to overcome failure, and to work as a team.
How we do it
Roosevelt Jazz is supported by a booster club and folks like you. We receive donations from Roosevelt High School families, friends and neighbors, alumni, small businesses, and lovers of jazz worldwide! Roosevelt High School provides classroom instruction, rehearsal space, and administrative support. We are grateful for its contribution and yours.
Thank you.
More about the Jazz Nutcracker
Listen to one of our first recorded performances—live from 2003
Roosevelt Jazz has performed at prestigious festivals worldwide, including multiple appearances at the Essentially Ellington competition, where it achieved four consecutive wins in the early 2000s. Enjoy one of our first recorded Jazz Nutcracker shows—live from 2003, a period of remarkable creativity and success in a program known for its showmanship and musicality.
Same setlist every year? Yes. Er, no?
Roosevelt Jazz Director Emeritus Scott Brown on why the Suite’s sound and swing shift with students
Every year brings new hurdles as the program adapts the performance to its current members. And every year comes with a series of questions, Mr. Brown said.
Will we have a lead trumpet player who can cover the range?
Is there a tenor sax player with the swagger needed to nail the sultry solo in “Sugar Rum Cherry”?
Will they be able to pull-off the beautiful, but very demanding, “Midnight Stroll”?
How will I, as director, adapt and teach the music in a responsible way, so as to make it work for everyone in the band?
How will you, as students, rise to this challenge?
A cardboard box filled with rare copies of Billy Strayhorn’s Nutcracker transcriptions
It began with a Dutch jazz scholar’s manuscript and a cardboard box that arrived at Roosevelt High School just one month before the first performance. Inside the box were arguably the most impressive arrangements from this period in Strayhorn’s creativity.
Student artist reveals the inspiration for her Roosevelt Rough Rider Nutcracker characters
“I filled close to 10 sketchbook pages with sketches of the nutcracker, rat king, and sugar plum fairy,” artist and drummer Momoko Heaton said. “The most challenging part was figuring out how to make each character unique while maintaining cohesion with the others and the overall poster design.”
Roosevelt Director of Bands Hannah Mowry invites 70 additional Roosevelt musicians and vocalists to share in the experience
Now under the direction of Hannah Mowry, this year’s performance will expand to include Jazz Bands 2 and 3, along with holiday tunes performed by Roosevelt Vocal Jazz. The decision to include all four ensembles ensures that everyone can participate in and learn from this beloved tradition while the program maintains its high standards. The piece combines recognizable Tchaikovsky themes with jazz mastery, creating a unique educational and artistic challenge for students.
The partnership between Roosevelt Jazz and Teen Feed represents a powerful confluence of two organizations’ missions to support youth. While Teen Feed meets fundamental youth welfare needs, Roosevelt Jazz enriches young lives through the transformative power of music—together creating a comprehensive approach to youth support.
There is a hierarchy of need. Teen Feed seeks to fill the basic and fundamental. Roosevelt Jazz seeks to enhance and supplement it. Yet sometimes, as exemplified by the story of 1999 Roosevelt Jazz alumnus Jumaane Smith, music programs do both, providing essential emotional support while opening doors to a better future.
A trumpeter, vocalist, and composer who has performed on five GRAMMY-winning records, Jumaane Smith speaks candidly about music’s transformative power when he attended Roosevelt High School.
Proceeds will benefit Roosevelt Jazz student musicians, its three big bands, and vocal ensemble. Your purchases help pay for instrument repair, sheet music, director and clinician stipends, festival fees and their associated travel.
Concert raffle for Teen Feed
Winners drawn Dec. 8. Prizes include:
Live show by a Roosevelt Jazz combo
2025 Starbucks Hot Java Cool Jazz concert tickets
Custom potted plant arrangement by Swansons Nursery
Winter gear drive
On behalf of Teen Feed, we are collecting jackets and raincoats, blankets and sleeping bags, hats and gloves at all Jazz Nutcracker shows.
Our mission: Teaching jazz in a public high school
Who we are
Roosevelt Jazz offers a jazz education that rivals the best programs in the world.
Our alumni attend top music conservatories and universities.
Notables include a GRAMMY vocalist, a trumpeter who recorded on 5 GRAMMY records, a drummer who performed with Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift, a trombonist who worked with Fleet Foxes, and a bassist who played with Beyoncé.
Who we serve
Our student musicians are passionate about performing and honing their skills. As a competitive program, we foster a spirit of excellence that runs deep. We hope our students:
Develop skills like grit, empathy, how to overcome failure, and to work as a team.
How we do it
Roosevelt Jazz is supported by a booster club and folks like you. We receive donations from Roosevelt High School families, friends and neighbors, alumni, small businesses, and lovers of jazz worldwide! Roosevelt High School provides classroom instruction, rehearsal space, and administrative support. We are grateful for its contribution and yours.
Thank you.
More about the Jazz Nutcracker
Listen to one of our first recorded performances—live from 2003
Roosevelt Jazz has performed at prestigious festivals worldwide, including multiple appearances at the Essentially Ellington competition, where it achieved four consecutive wins in the early 2000s. Enjoy one of our first recorded Jazz Nutcracker shows—live from 2003, a period of remarkable creativity and success in a program known for its showmanship and musicality.
Same setlist every year? Yes. Er, no?
Roosevelt Jazz Director Emeritus Scott Brown on why the Suite’s sound and swing shift with students
Every year brings new hurdles as the program adapts the performance to its current members. And every year comes with a series of questions, Mr. Brown said.
Will we have a lead trumpet player who can cover the range?
Is there a tenor sax player with the swagger needed to nail the sultry solo in “Sugar Rum Cherry”?
Will they be able to pull-off the beautiful, but very demanding, “Midnight Stroll”?
How will I, as director, adapt and teach the music in a responsible way, so as to make it work for everyone in the band?
How will you, as students, rise to this challenge?
A cardboard box filled with rare copies of Billy Strayhorn’s Nutcracker transcriptions
It began with a Dutch jazz scholar’s manuscript and a cardboard box that arrived at Roosevelt High School just one month before the first performance. Inside the box were arguably the most impressive arrangements from this period in Strayhorn’s creativity.
Student artist reveals the inspiration for her Roosevelt Rough Rider Nutcracker characters
“I filled close to 10 sketchbook pages with sketches of the nutcracker, rat king, and sugar plum fairy,” artist and drummer Momoko Heaton said. “The most challenging part was figuring out how to make each character unique while maintaining cohesion with the others and the overall poster design.”
Roosevelt Director of Bands Hannah Mowry invites 70 additional Roosevelt musicians and vocalists to share in the experience
Now under the direction of Hannah Mowry, this year’s performance will expand to include Jazz Bands 2 and 3, along with holiday tunes performed by Roosevelt Vocal Jazz. The decision to include all four ensembles ensures that everyone can participate in and learn from this beloved tradition while the program maintains its high standards. The piece combines recognizable Tchaikovsky themes with jazz mastery, creating a unique educational and artistic challenge for students.
