Weekend of Jazz, also known as WOJ, is an event hosted in Beavercreek at Beavercreek High School. It features many jazz bands from around the area and even our own here at BHS. Jazz bands 1-4 will be performing this weekend, jazz bands from our middle schools, etc. The live stream from Friday night is up on the Beavercreek City School youtube page.

This year marks 21 years of WOJ. It started in 1991 with the old band director, Mr. McCullough. When the construction for the auditorium was finished, McCullough wanted to use something with the space since he didn’t want it to just sit there. That’s what inspired what we have today.

Weekend of Jazz is an amazing event full of music and fun with your friends and family. You can spend time together while listening to amazing music from jazz bands in the area, like Lebanon High School, Miami East, Lakota West, and so much more.

Jazz music has been integrated with our history for so many years. Weekend of Jazz is a way to bring our community closer together through music and fun. Jazz is personally one of my favorite styles of music because of how different each song is. There are different genres within this genre, like latin and funk. It is different interpretations of American, European, African, and slave folk songs and the influences of West African culture. Louis Armstrong is known as the king of jazz to this day.

Our A-list event was a performance by the jazz band the Naughty Professor. They played for about an hour and a half and it was so good. They originated from New Orleans and all met in college. They didn’t start touring the country until about 2014. The members of this amazing group got to do clinics with the students in our jazz bands on Friday night. Everyone got great advice on how to move their music further. “We were super impressed with all the jazz bands today. Very impressive for high school level bands.” says their drummer.

Jazz is such a big part of music, and it’s amazing to see how it brings our community together every single year.