Have you ever had a band kid come up and bug you to buy tickets to Blue Note Cafe? Did they explain what it was? Or did they just huff and scamper off to find someone else to bother?

  Blue Note Cafe is the band program’s biggest fundraiser of the year. As much as we would like to claim the name as our own, Blue Note Cafe got its name from the famous jazz club Blue Note of New York.

  The club started in the early 80’s quickly gaining attention and hosting big name jazz artists like Chick Corea, Dizzy Gillespie and Stevie Wonder. Big Sky’s Blue Note Cafe doesn’t have Stevie Wonder, but there are silent auctions and raffle prizes, while the Big Sky Jazz Band serenades the crowd.

“We play Blue Note because we love the music, even if we mess up,” says senior Sierra Cornwell, trumpet player in the jazz band. “We’re there to enjoy the music, with people I think of as family.”

  Blue Note Cafe is a night of jazz music and delicious desserts. A ticket to the show got the audience in the door and a seat at a blue clothed table with twinkling lights above. The dimly lit stage carried the sound of the Big Sky Jazz Band playing classic songs like “Fly Me to the Moon”, “Cubano Chant” and “Big Dipper”. The jazz band took a break to showcase Big Sky Alumni playing new music and showing where jazz can take young musicians.

  Molly Weigel, flutist of the Big Sky Symphonic Band, gives an outside perspective on the fundraiser, “Blue Note is the biggest fundraiser for band. It helps with our trips, instruments and the overall band program. Students get to earn money by waiting on tables and parents get to brag about their kids going to unique places to their coworkers.”

  All the money raised from Blue Note Cafe is put towards whatever big trip the band is going on.

  This year the Wind Ensemble and Jazz Band are headed to Washington D.C. at the end of this month to play at the Kennedy Center, which is very prestigious. The more money raised from Blue Note Cafe, the lower the overall price is for students to pay for whatever trip is coming up, out of pocket.

  “We fundraise so we can go on amazing trips like New Orleans,” Cornwell says reminiscing about the previous band trip taken two years ago. “I hope to make memories like the ones we made there, in D.C.”