In February we reported that Ballard High School’s jazz band is one of only 15 schools in the country to make the cut to compete in the Essentially Ellington Festival at Lincoln Center.

The band just arrived in New York (above) for the competition on Friday and Saturday. Each band will perform before a distinguished panel of judges — including Wynton Marsalis — which will be live-streamed online here.

Ballard is scheduled to perform between 10-11:30 a.m. our time on Saturday. Then at 1 p.m. PT, judges will announce the top three bands. Later that night, the winner will be announced.

The BHS jazz band has had a busy year. In March it was one 13 high school bands selected to play at the Next Generation Jazz Festival in Monterey, CA. Then later that month, BHS was one of five Western Washington high school jazz bands selected to perform in Starbucks’ 23rd annual Hot Java Cool Jazz event at the Paramount Theater for a sold-out performance.

We’ll let you know how the band does in NYC. Go BHS!

(Photo from the Ballard Performing Arts Twitter account).