Last weekend, many hours of effort on the part of talented young musicians, educators and parents culminated in the Maine State Jazz Festival in Newport. An otherwise exemplary event was marred by one occurrence. The Maine Music Educators Association’s Jazz Committee disqualified George Stevens Academy Jazz Band from the finals competition for playing over the 15-minute time limit.

As GSA played their first note, their director clicked on a stopwatch. As they neared the time limit, the GSA director cut the band short, stopping short of the last note of the piece just as his stopwatch recorded 15 minutes, no seconds.

The Jazz Committee timer used his own stopwatch and he recorded 15 minutes, four seconds. Why was there a discrepancy? Did the timer begin recording too soon or did the director begin late? No one knows, because there was no common time clock and no signal to begin was given. The GSA jazz band was disqualified and received no official recognition for their performance. Their score sheets were torn up and discarded. The 26 members of the band were devastated. The message the students took away from this was that the committee decreed that all the hours of effort the students had spent over the past year would be erased and counted for nothing. The severity of the judgment cast a pall over the evening for everyone present.

The Jazz Committee chose to insist upon a zero tolerance policy with no room for common sense judgment and consideration of circumstances. Due to the harshness of the penalty, they should, at the least, enforce the rule fairly by displaying a clock so that the timing is not subjective and it is clear when the time begins and ends.

I hope the members of the GSA jazz band can eventually put the action of the committee behind them and dwell instead upon the spectacular moments they spent on stage under the direction of the incomparable Steve Orlofsky. Anne Gommel Lamoine