Julia and I have had a great week spending time in the L.A. area leading up to our current hang at the Monterey Next Generation Festival.  We're in the Portola Plaza Hotel, which hosts the festival. Junior High, High School and College instrumental and vocal jazz groups from all around the country submit audition recordings to be selected as finalists for this weekend's competition.  Sac State has both of our vocal jazz ensembles in the running for the college vocal jazz prize, which is a bit of money and a performance slot at the Monterey Jazz Festival in September.  The other college groups are killing...Mt. San Antonio College, Contra Costa College, Cuesta College and American River College, so it'll be a hip day tomorrow when we all perform. 

Today we'll be watching high school vocal jazz groups, for the most part, including Folsom's "A" choir, Orange Lutheran, L.A. County Performing Arts, Downey, and more great groups that have slipped my mind at the moment.  Also performing for the first time will be my Monterey County High School Honor Vocal Jazz Ensemble; the same group that we'll be touring with in Japan this July. 

I'm going to be tweeting the events of the day as much as possible.  Find my on Twitter at "kerrymarsh."

A refreshing video-of-the-day...Pat Metheny's "First Circle."