MDC Instrument Gifting photo courtesy of Fairview Middle School

For 15 years starting in 1960, the Olympic College Jazz Festival was a proving ground for budding jazz musicians in the Northwest. Overseen by Ralph Mutchler, then the Olympic College Jazz Director, the event drew dozens of middle school and high school jazz bands from Washington state to compete in front of an all-star panel of adjudicators. But its success was its initial undoing. The festival folded in 1975 with Mutchler referring to it as “a monster of our own creation.” 

Fast forward a full 50 years and the competition has returned. Now dubbed the Quincy Square Jazz Festival, the recent event brought nine jazz ensembles, including groups from Bainbridge Island and Kingston, to Olympic College for a brand new tournament. The day-long festival concluded with the top two high school groups from Ballard and Gig Harbor, and the top middle school band representing Fairview Middle School, performing at a gala event at Bremerton’s Roxy Theatre. The finale was a sell out. 

“It’s really, really exciting,” says Francesco Crosara, celebrated jazz pianist and board president of Music Discovery Center (MDC), the non-profit that helped bring the Quincy Square Jazz Festival back to life. “Ralph Mutchler’s family was there, and his son gave the trophy to the band that won. It’s really wonderful that not just the MDC, but also Olympic College really embraced this idea.” 

The Quincy Square Jazz Festival is just one of the many vital initiatives the MDC has undertaken since its founding in 2019. Led by a team of musicians and music lovers from around the state, the non-profit has developed a number of programs, all with the goal of encouraging young people to start or continue making music. 

For Crosara, the work he does with MDC (outside of his own schedule of performing and recording) is a part of what he sees as the great continuum; a road he once travelled when he began studying the piano as a young man growing up in Italy. Mentored by the likes of Dizzy Dillespie and Chick Corea, in his own formative years, Crosara is an example of the impact of mentorship–and, that what jazz teaches us are lessons we carry across life.

“[Fifth grade] is the key time where they have that passion for music, and from there, join the band and then make music part of their life,” says Crosara. “Hopefully jazz, but if it isn’t jazz, that is fine as long as they have this infusion of music.”

When he joined up with the non-profit in 2022, he was tasked with organizing the West Puget Sound edition of Make Music Day, an annual event featuring hundreds of free concerts for amateur and semi-professional musicians.

“It’s really fun,” says Crosara, “because what you see is a combination of all ages, all races, all genders, and all genres of music…. To perform and do outreach — it all intertwines.”