NC Central Jazz Band wins 2023 "Jack Rudin Jazz Championship" in New York City

NC Central University's Jazz Band won first place at the Lincoln Center in New York City, earning the school 10 thousand dollars.

Posted 7:45 p.m. Mar 15, 2023 — Updated 5:16 p.m. Mar 20, 2023

Rick Armstrong

, Enterprise multimedia journalist

DURHAM, N.C. — Editor’s note: The original version of this story incorrectly included Dr. Ira Wiggins on a list of recent deaths impacting the NC Central Jazz Band. Wiggins retired in 2021 from the university. The story and associated video have been corrected. We apologize to Dr. Wiggins and the NC Central community.

While all eyes seem to be on NCAA Basketball's March Madness, NC Central in Durham has already won a national first-place crown of their own.

It wasn't won on a court, but rather last January in the New York City venue Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Jazz great Wynton Marsalis announced the winner of 2023's "Jack Rudin Jazz Championship." When he spoke the words "North Carolina," the roar from the NC Central's band members was deafening.

The first place award earned the school 10 thousand dollars. It was a major victory for NC Central University's Jazz Band because of whom they competed against. The competition included the top collegiate jazz ensembles from around the country.

Percussion professor Thomas Taylor said, "So you get bands like Michigan State, Temple University, North Texas..." Taylor said each of those universities has thousands more students than NC Central.

NCCU has been the only HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) in the country invited to compete. "We were, I guess, the David amongst Goliaths," said Thomas.

Even so, they had been invited each of the three years the event has been held. They came up just short of winning until this year.

The odds of winning may have seemed especially improbable this year due to the recent retirement of the university's jazz ensemble director Dr. Ira Wiggins and the deaths of music professor Arnold George and music director Brian Horton.

Taylor said, "We thought we were going to have, you know, many, many years of great education from Dr. Horton and he passed away suddenly.

Filling the void was professor Robert Trowers. "He was our secret weapon that we didn't really utilize to the degree that we could have," said Thomas.

Trowers led the band to a resounding victory.

Taylor says the experience may change the course of many of the band students' lives. "Some of them will go on to create their own things and become those leaders and those performers or educators or people who work in the industry of music. I know that they will be a part of that. It's just a seminal moment in their life."

Taylor added that for many of the students, it was their first time performing at the New York venue and some had never before left North Carolina.

Obviously, when it came down to the music, they were not nervous at all.

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