Photo by Seth Taub
St. George's American Music Ensemble
In the world of jazz, few publications hold as much weight as DownBeat magazine. Founded in 1934, it quickly established itself as the authority on jazz, celebrating excellence to this day with its annual readers’ and critics’ polls of the field’s top instrumentalists, bands, and albums. And for almost half a century, DownBeat has also presented Student Music Awards. So when the hallowed journal picks a Memphis high school band as the top group of its kind in the nation, people take notice.
The modest size of St. George’s Independent School makes it that much sweeter that their band was just named the nation’s “Best High School Blues/Pop/Rock Group” in DownBeat’s 45th Annual Student Music Awards. As artist-in-residence and sole band director Tom Link notes, “A large part of it is that people here have a way deeper connection to some very important musical roots than people elsewhere. That’s one of the reasons why my students are so good. It’s because we’re here. And my school recognizes that and supports that.”
While many imagine a high school band in uniforms, marching across sports fields, St. George’s has cultivated a more scaled-back approach to music, and that may have given them the edge in the pop group category. “St. George’s is a tiny school,” Link says. “It used to be that even tiny schools had a marching band, but not so much now. Ours is just a rock band. A bass player, drummer, keyboard player, two guitar players, two singers, and four horn players. It’s a straight-up pop band. They’re the advanced kids in the upper school. The middle year band with younger kids has the same configuration, but we play more of a mix of jazz tunes and blues, just to get them used to playing. And then we have an introductory class for kids who are just learning their instruments. And that’s it.”
Nonetheless, this core group of players is learning every aspect of modern music-making. It doesn’t hurt that Link is an in-demand professional saxophonist who can walk the students through every facet of both performance and recording. “Before Covid,” he says, “we would go to a studio every year, like Ardent, and do a project. And that was cool, but then the studio engineer was doing all the real work. During Covid, we were forced to stop that, and we had no idea if that was going to work, putting that responsibility on the kids. Like, expecting them to learn the technology and record their own tracks. They had to become way more involved in the process than just standing around a microphone. But they rose to that occasion.”
Photo by Seth Taub
To be considered for DownBeat’s award, a school band must submit three recorded songs, produced with as much professional pizzazz as possible. To achieve that, Link has them start working on the process well before the submission deadline. “You send in your recordings, and they have panels of professionals reviewing them,” he explains. “We’re in the middle of recording songs right now that I’ll submit at the end of this year. Two of the tracks I submitted last year were completely produced and engineered by students. I didn’t touch them at all. These days, it’s on their laptops. We make great sounding recordings using Logic and GarageBand.”
Often, the ensemble writes and produces original songs, but interpreting hit songs is also crucial. “Oddly, this is the first year we’ve won where all the tracks are covers,” Link explains. “We did ‘No Ordinary Love’ by Sade, but the kid that produced it added a whole rap verse to it. And we did ‘Dirty Work’ by Steely Dan, with female rather than male vocals. And we did Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Drivers License.’ The impressive part was that it sounded exactly like the record.”
Now the young players can revel in their win. “It’s incredible to flip through the pages and see your school on the same page as the University of North Texas or the Manhattan School of Music,” Link enthuses. “Every university pays attention if this award shows up on a kid’s resume. And when the kids see it, they see they’re part of a bigger thing. Until then, they just don’t know how good they really are.”