MKA Sophomore Recieves National Outstanding Soloist Award

Many congratulations to MKA sophomore Isaiah Thompson who recently received the outstanding piano soloist award at the highly prestigious 2013 Jazz at Lincoln Center, Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition.

Isaiah is currently the pianist/keyboard player in the MKA Upper School Jazz Band, is a member of the MKA Concert Band on bari saxaphone and studies music theory with Upper School Band Director Chuck Olsen.  In addition to playing at MKA, he is the pianist with "Jazz House Kids Big Band" a Montclair based jazz education organization that won second place prize in the High School Jazz Band category at the Essentially Ellington Competition this year, and he is also a member of the Jazz for Teens program at NJPAC. This Summer, Isaiah will study jazz piano on a full scholarship at the Berklee College of Music in Boston in an intensive five-week summer program for high school students.

"The "Essentially Ellington Competition" is THE most competitive HSJB competition in the country (probably in the world) and attracts the most outstanding bands from coast to coast to coast." Notes Olsen.  "This annual event, hosted by jazz superstar Wynton Marsalis, has taken place at Lincoln Center for the past eighteen years and it is a spectacular achievement by, and honor for, our own Isaiah Thompson to be selected for this award."