Greene County High School’s vocal jazz group is gearing up for a competition on Friday.

Vocal Director David Heupel tells Raccoon Valley Radio Ram Jive will be heading to Spirit Lake High School for a competition. Fresh off of a Division I-rating from the state jazz choir festival that happened earlier this month, the ensemble will continue to work on its three songs before recording two of them to submit for consideration to perform at the Iowa Vocal Jazz Championships. Those songs include, “It’s A Beautiful Day,” “Killing Me Softly,” and “It’s You or No One.”

Heupel says the students are starting to work well together and listening to each other in order to fine tune themselves. He appreciates their willingness to practice at odd times of the season.

“We’ve done everything. We’ve done evenings, we’ve done after school, we’ve done a lot of mornings, but we have to work around (with) what they’re involved in because we’ve got kids that are in speech, basketball – boys and girls basketball – we’ve got a basketball manager, NHS (National Honor Society), student council. So they’re all so involved in so many other things, so it’s tough to work around that.” 

Heupel adds that next Friday, February 24th, will be the 2nd Annual All That Jazz Festival, featuring a night time concert with the two clinicians, including Kate Reid from the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and Charlie Christenson from the Berkeley School of Music in Boston.