When Joe Bongiovi is in line at the local donut shop, complete strangers will go up to him and ask about the group of high school students he leads and if there’s a good chance that they’ll win the state championship this year. But they don’t ask about the starting quarterback or the shortstop. They don’t ask about the power forward or the goalie, either.
They might, however, ask about the drummer or the trumpet player.
Since 2007, Bongiovi has been the director of the Princeton High School Studio Band, a celebrated jazz ensemble whose reputation precedes them. Bongiovi laughs when he discusses the band’s local celebrity nature, but not without a strong sense of pride for the hard work of his students.
“We just have this very huge persona in the town of Princeton,” he said. “How many communities actually care that much about what’s happening with the high school jazz band?”
But appreciation for Studio Band’s excellence has reached far beyond Princeton’s borders, proving that they’re on par with any professional jazz ensemble. Over the years, they’ve played at two Presidential Inaugurations; toured Europe; and perhaps most important to the band’s legacy, they’ve reigned victorious 15 times at Boston’s Berklee High School Jazz Festival, a highly-regarded annual competition designed by the esteemed college of music to showcase the talents of America’s many high school jazz ensembles, as well as offer them performance evaluations, clinics, workshops, and even scholarship opportunities. With over 200 participating ensembles, it’s the country’s largest high school jazz festival, according to its website.
The Studio Band will return to Berklee on Jan. 31, not necessarily to win its sixth straight first place finish, but to accomplish a more personal goal.
“When we are done performing, before we get results, we discuss our performance as a group,” Bongiovi said. “Were we happy with what we did? Were we not happy with what we did? And at the end of the night, [our self-evaluation] is more important than what the judges think.”
A similar attitude is taken towards the New Jersey Association for Jazz Education yearly State Jazz Festival, which the Studio Band, since Bongiovi has been at the helm, has won the championship four times, and has placed second three times. “Each year, we try to outdo ourselves,” Bongiovi said, “and we work harder to outdo what we did the year before.”
Bongiovi notes that when the Studio Band enters competitions like these, they try to do songs in three distinct styles. “We model after the groups who do [a given] style the best. So if you see our competition set, you’re going to see three different things entirely, and we’re trying to do them at the best level.”
This year, you can expect nothing less from the band, who, according to Bongiovi, “search[es] hard for high-level material [to perform].” Culling from a folder of about 250 different potential songs, Bongiovi and the Studio Band settled on the following three: “Caravan,” to be performed as a more energetic and aggressive version of the Jim Widner Big Band’s take on the classic (arranged by John Wasson), which, coincidentally, happens to be the exact version featured prominently in the 2014 film Whiplash, directed by PHS alum Damien Chazelle, whose own experience in the Studio Band loosely inspired the film’s subject matter (see articles on Page 1 and Page 8); “Minuano,” by Pat Metheny; and “Race to the Finish,” a new song which the Studio Band acquired from the University of North Texas.
Of course, none of this — the opportunities, the awards, the acclaim — would be possible without the Studio Band’s founding father, the late Dr. Anthony Biancosino, or as he was known to all, Dr. B.
“The longer I’m here, I have a greater appreciation for what he did,” says Bongiovi. “He has made my job possible. He broke the mold of how it should be done and set up the logistics for it to be this way and be successful.”
“The mold” refers to the standard type of music education present in most American high schools. Bongiovi explains how, thanks to Dr. B, Princeton High School’s instrumental music program is special, in terms of band: “Most schools have a concert band and a marching band; we don’t have a concert band or a marching band — we only do jazz band.”
Bongiovi said that there are six different jazz bands corresponding to different difficulty levels, with the Studio Band at the most advanced end of the spectrum. After auditioning before each new school year, a given student is placed in the appropriate band, according to ability level. Helping to teach the other jazz groups is co-director, Scott Grimaldi.
So how does a jazz-centric band program benefit the students? “Because jazz bands are smaller — I have a group of 30 kids at a time instead of a group of 100 [concert band students] at a time—our ratio is smaller, so we have the ability to give better ratio instruction and nobody falls through the cracks,”Bongiovi said.
He tips his hat to Dr. B, a man he, unfortunately, never met. “That was unique thinking — nobody does that. I think educationally, [this way of] running it is better.”
He also credits the community’s role, as well as that of the school district, for the program’s success: “The only way it works is because Princeton, as a community, values jazz… and the financial support from the district keeps it all afloat.”
When Bongiovi took over the program in 2007, it was still in a transition period following Biancosino’s death in 2003. In the three-year interim, the Studio Band was kept alive by Dr. B’s brother, Joe Downey, who eventually stepped down to pursue primary education.
PHS sought out Bongiovi after taking note of his success with the jazz band at Steinert High School in Hamilton. Bongiovi, who received his undergraduate degree in film scoring from Berklee, and his Master’s at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, said he never felt like he was living in Dr. B’s shadow.
“[The administration] made me feel like when I got there, it was my program,” he said. “They never said ‘[Dr. B] did it this way’; they said ‘We brought you in for what you do, so do what you do, and we’ll give you the resources to do it.” He notes that when he arrived, there were many good things already in place, like the curriculum structure and the tradition of excellence, but also there were some missing elements.
Within a year, he had restructured the program to fill these gaps. “I think that I found a way to merge how they were doing things and my vision together,” Bongiovi said. “And it’s been a good fit; it’s worked out for both me and the band.”
The 2014-2015 incarnation of the Studio Band features some 35 students: 6 trumpets, 5 trombones, 1 tuba, 6 saxophones, 5 flutes, 4 clarinets, 2 drummers, 2 bass players, 2 piano players, 2 guitar players, 1 vibraphone player, and 3 vocalists. According to Bongiovi, this Studio Band boasts the largest group of freshmen to ever make the cut, adding that, because of this, the distribution among grade levels is more or less equally divided.
Although the Studio Band prides itself on its group identity, the 2014-2015 lineup contains three standout seniors, all of whom have been members since they were freshmen.
One senior is trumpet section leader, Sam Wolsk, whose talents have scored him a candidate position for the National Grammy Band. And even though Wolsk’s individual trumpet playing is peerless, he’s still more concerned about the bigger picture.
“Each year [at Berklee] after [my freshman year], I was actually less pleased with my own performance, but I was always happy with the band’s performance,”said Wolsk. “I always felt like the band was going to get a good place because I always thought we played well.”
In June, he will have to choose his replacement as section leader, but with the high level of playing that characterizes the Studio Band, he’s not worried: “It will be in good hands.”
Bongiovi points out that all of the students in Studio Band understand that they have to leave room for the next era of the band to flourish. “There’s a pride in who they’re leaving behind to keep it going,” he said, adding that “The alumni all check in, constantly.”
Another equally important section leader is flutist Sarah Eisenach, who’s responsible for the entire woodwinds section —i.e. flutes and clarinets.
“It’s difficult being in the woodwinds section [of a jazz band] because most parts aren’t made for flutes and clarinets,” she said, “so we always use the sax parts, which can be difficult at times because we need to transpose them.”
But the texture her section brings to the overall soundscape doesn’t go unnoticed. “I think we’re respected in the band,” said Eisenach, who also observes that the Studio Band is every Princeton-area middle school musician’s dream. “I was fortunate enough to get in, but that definitely made me work harder.”
When Eisenach notes that her section doesn’t take solos like some of the more high-profile ones do, Bongiovi sets the record straight that this does not decrease her value in the band: “We can’t lose a single person,” he said.
But if there’s one person Studio Band really can’t afford to lose, it’s the band’s heartbeat, drummer extraordinaire, rhythm section leader, and true student of the music, Katherine Gerberich. But as a graduating senior, her time in the Studio Band is waning.
“If I could clone her and keep her another four years, I would,” Bongiovi said.
After taking up percussion in fourth grade and graduating to a full drum set by seventh grade, Gerberich had built up enough chops to make it to the Studio Band in her freshman year. At that point, she was the band’s second drummer — in other words she only got to perform one piece during Studio Band’s competition set.
But her subordinate position didn’t stop her from giving it her all on that one song, “Heat of the Day,” by Pat Metheny. Gerberich studied the song and picked it apart like a musical scientist, putting it in Garage Band and chopping it into digestible sections so that she could properly learn how to cue the band during its final minute, a complex suspense-filled frenzy of music.
If that wasn’t enough, two nights before her first Berklee Festival, in 2012, in the middle of rehearsing the Metheny number, she hit her index finger on the rim of the snare drum and broke it.
Bongiovi recalls, “She called me that night and said ‘My mom wants me to go to the X-ray — don’t worry about it. I’m going to play, I’m going to play, I’m going to play.’ And she did. It wasn’t a pride thing for her, personally; it was more that she didn’t want to let the group down.”
And despite her multiple soloist awards, the group is still Gerberich’s main concern, three years later. When asked what she’s most proud of in her four years of Studio Band, she says “I’m most proud when we get a section award; it means more than any kind of individual recognition, especially for us as a rhythm section …it means more; it means that we can play together as a group and we’re really setting up the band for success
“I like it when the horn players or whoever says ‘That take felt really good tonight.’ That means more than ‘You played a great solo.’ That’s a nice compliment — thank you very much — but I would definitely say when other musicians feel like you’re playing well with them, that’s even better.”
Bongiovi describes Gerberich best: “She’s been here for four years and I know when she came in, she didn’t feel like she was qualified to be here. But she worked harder than everybody else and she was qualified to be here. And now I don’t know how we’re ever going to replace her. We can replace her with another drummer, but we can’t replace the attitude and demeanor. Luckily, it has rubbed off on everyone else in the band.”
If there’s a secret to the band’s success beyond the hours of practice and fervent determination, it’s one thing: the sense of family. “There is really a core family aspect to this group, which makes us able to achieve a lot of what we can, because if you can’t work together, then you’re not going to achieve anything; but if you all understand each other, it works out,” Gerberich said.
“It’s the best group of kids who do everything for each other and with each other,” adds Bongiovi, about the members of Studio Band. “Our group is so tightly knit — they spend so much time together and they travel together; they can’t function without each other at times.”
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