After a sixth place finish last year, City High’s Jazz Ensemble won the 2026 Iowa Jazz Championships.
As awards are being announced, they start with eighth place and continue down all the way to first.
“Our name kept not getting called, which is a very interesting feeling. You’re like, wait, did they forget about us? And then our name was the last one,” Jazz Ensemble director Aaron Ottmar said. “It was just unreal. I was very overwhelmed with emotions, and I think the students felt that same way too.”
This is the second time the group has won the Iowa Jazz Championships, after a first place finish in 2024. The group did not qualify by placing in the top two at the district competition. Instead, they were selected via wild card because of their overall season performance.
“I feel like it’s cooler to get chosen as a wild card band, because the people at the [Iowa Jazz Championships] are collectively thinking about [how we] have won all these other competitions or placed very highly,” Coraline Etler ‘26 said. “It means more to me than just random competition results.”
According to Ottmar, judging can be subjective, like in any musical competition, so it’s important for the group to focus on things they can control.
“[This group] loves making music, and I’ll take that over anything, regardless of results,” Ottmar said. “I always tell them to not take that for granted, because it’s something you can control. You can’t control points or placements or getting a trophy or not, [but] you can control how you approach what you do musically, and they are just very intentional with that.”
This year’s group of seniors, including several that were members of the 2024 championship-winning band, have especially led that intentionality over the past four years. These wins, however, aren’t the biggest takeaway for Levine.
“I love being able to do something I’m passionate about with my friends. You don’t get that many opportunities to do something at a really high level and with the people who you know, the only people that you want to do it with,” Levine said. “So I think that’s just pretty amazing to get the opportunity.”
Ottmar and his City High bands co-director Mike Kowbel often emphasize having a City High band family, not only in the Jazz band but throughout the program as well. This year’s senior class has especially helped support that.
“There [are] 12 seniors out of the 20 [jazz ensemble members] of them. They’ve done a really, really wonderful job of serving our jazz program and our band program…through the years,” Ottmar said. “They’ve done so much to put in hard work and dedication to not only play music at a high level, but to care about the family atmosphere altogether.”
