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The 24th annual Jazz Festival is an all-day event featuring multi-instrumentalist, John Nastos. The festival provides an opportunity for students to learn about and experience a wide array of jazz music.

There will be clinics held throughout the day today that focus on a wide variety of instruments, where people are welcome to ask questions, play an instrument or just learn something new.

At noon, John Nastos will be playing the saxophone with WSU’s Jazz Big Band for the gala festival.

Brad Ard, guitarist and instructor of music, has been playing music his whole life and grew up in a musical family.

Ard stresses that jazz is not performed in the same way as rock or reggae. To demonstrate this, he strummed his fingers across the guitar, and a reggae melody played out. He subtlety strummed once more, and the sound of smooth jazz played out.

“Hopefully, we can open some of the student’s eyes to the different ways of thinking of playing jazz,” Ard said.

WSU’s School of Music invited various high schools to prepare pieces to play and receive evaluations by adjudicators. The evaluators hold clinics to break down the critiques with the performers and help them understand the adjudicator’s comments, Ard said.

Dave Snider, bassist at the festival and School of Music Instructor, has played bass around the world and every year, he looks forward to everything that comes along with this festival.

“You can learn something and meet people,” Snider said. “It’s a little break from your everyday thing.”

The goal is for the professors to show the student performers the best parts of WSU, Snider said.

John Nastos will give the local jazz audience an opportunity to hear somebody different, as he’s never played on the Palouse.

“It’s adding one more piece to this great big pizza pie,” Snider said.

David Jarvis, coordinator of production studies, has been playing percussion instruments for most of his life, has been in jazz groups and taught jazz history.

Jarvis enjoys the educational setting this festival has to offer every year that combines the knowledge of the faculty, musicians and students. It is also a great way to recruit students to WSU and the School of Music, Jarvis said.

“It acts as a magnet, as far as getting young people to come to the campus, which is important,” Jarvis said.

Jazz has its own universal language that everyone knows, because there’s a proper way of playing it, Jarvis said. When jazz is performed or played correctly, and it will never be heard again in the same way, Jarvis said.

“As far as improvisation is concerned, we follow a construction,” Jarvis said, “but what unfolds happens at that moment, that’s the beauty of jazz.”

The 24th annual Jazz Festival begins at 8 a.m. today, and the last performance will begin at 6 p.m. Performances will be held in Kimbrough Concert Hall and Bryan Hall Theatre. Admission is free.