Jazz: From Texas to New York

Mr. Pierce was our assistant band director first at Shepton HS and then during my Time at Plano West HS. He was always in charge of many different aspects of our band experience (from marching bands to symphonic ensembles to social aspects of the band). However his passion has always been jazz and his passion is infectious. Mr. Pierce transformed the Plano West jazz program from an after school club into a class and over time into a nationally (and internationally) recognized group. We were lucky during my time there that we had some really talented people to bootstrap our band with, and this was not lost on Mr. Pierce who helped develop those players into professional musicians in some cases and used their skills to make the rest of us better as individuals and as a group. His passion for the music and history of the art was deep, and he always came to practice with anecdotes about the pieces we were playing and loved to gossip about recordings and charts with the other students who were into the genre as well. All of this culminated in our band being nominated for Essentially Ellington, which is where jazz bands are selected from across the country (and world in some cases) to compete and play charts from Duke Ellington at Lincoln Center in New York. It was a transformative experience for us as students and musicians, and Mr. Pierce made sure that everyone took it seriously and was able to make it work financially. Several years later, the band has been to the competition multiple times and has gained a lot of other recognition - all of it well deserved. Jazz is easy to appreciate but hard to master, and passion is the gap to get you there, especially in a band program where you turn over musicians every year. Mr. Pierce has exemplified that for me and has created a program that will be inspiring musicians to get into jazz for years to come.