Essentially Ellington Jazz Festival and Competition

The Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival is an annual high school jazz festival and competition that takes place every May at Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC) in New York City. The festival is aimed at encouraging young musicians to play music by Duke Ellington and other various jazz artists. All festival events are housed at JALC's Frederick P. Rose Hall. The current festival director is Wynton Marsalis, renowned jazz trumpeter and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Every year, the festival offers a membership package to high school and secondary school band directors around North America and in American schools around the world. The essential components of the package consist of original Duke Ellington transcription charts, their corresponding recordings by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and other materials. In 2007, 5,400 transcribed Duke Ellington scores were distributed along with other reference materials to American and Canadian schools worldwide.

Each year, a maximum of eight Duke Ellington charts are transcribed and released to participating bands. After each competition, the eight charts are then added to the overall Essentially Ellington library. Bands who wish to compete must record three charts from the Essentially Ellington library. However, at least one of these charts must be a new transcription, although bands have the option to do as many as three new transcriptions for their three charts on the audition recording. To submit an application for competition in the actual festival, band directors may choose to record their band playing the music under a written criteria. The audition recordings are then sent to Lincoln Center, where a judging panel picks the top fifteen bands through a blind screening process. Bands are also given the option of sending tapes in for 'comments only'. This means that the recordings will not be scored, but will have adjudicator comments sent back to the director for band improvement.

For the 2008-2009 year, Jazz at Lincoln Center released three Benny Carter charts, along with three other Ellington compositions. This was the first time in festival history that the repertoire was opened up to works composed by someone outside of Ellington's orchestra. For the years following 2008-2009, the chart selection followed the same format: three Ellington charts and three charts from another composer:

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