The New Jersey Association for Jazz Education is presenting an opportunity to participate in the official jazz festival sponsored by your state organization devoted solely to jazz education.

The festival occurs in two phases:

• A preliminary round of all participating ensembles, regardless of school size, held at five locations on consecutive nights and adjudicated by the same three professionals. Sight-reading is required and is scored as 15% of the total score in the preliminary round. Improvisation is also required as part of the sight-reading chart, and is one of the new components of the sight-reading adjudication sheet.

• A final round held at three locations; each of the top nine scoring bands from the preliminary round is grouped by school enrollment. Sight-reading and improvisation are required and are identical to the preliminary round.