SFJAZZ High School All-Star on the Rise

Saxophonist Ben Flocks Heading to Brubeck Institute

The first jazz concert Ben Flocks experienced was a performance by Joshua Redman’s Elastic Band in Flocks’ hometown of Santa Cruz, CA.  At the time Flocks, a eighth grader at Santa Cruz’s Pacific Collegiate School, was a novice saxophonist, and says he didn’t even know what jazz was. “Once I heard [Redman], I knew that jazz was my music.” Flocks said of the concert. “I knew that I wanted to play this music for the rest of my life.”

Flocks continued to hone his saxophone skills until classmates at Pacific Collegiate School encouraged him to try out for the SFJAZZ High School All-Stars. The All-Stars, an advanced-level training and performance program for exceptional Bay Area high school musicians,  focuses on providing students with unique rehearsal, workshop, and performance experiences, including bi-annual mainstage performances in the SFJAZZ Spring Season and San Francisco Jazz Festival. Community outreach is built into the program, with ensemble members working as clinicians and mentors for aspiring middle school musicians through school site visits and performances.

Flocks was named an alternate as a sophomore, and one of his first gigs with the band was an interactive workshop with Boys and Girls Club in Palo Alto. “That was my first opportunity to play in a really great big band setting with awesome musicians from all around the Bay Area,” said Flocks. “I was pretty stoked to go up there and just get an opportunity to hear all these great players play. That definitely inspired me to work harder for the rest of the year and practice over the summer and really try and make it into the band for the next year.”

Over that summer, Flocks attended the Stanford Jazz Workshop, made connections with other Bay Area musicians, and worked tirelessly to improve his playing and sight-reading. All the hard work paid off. When rehearsals came around, not only did he make the band—he became the lead tenor player. His first rehearsal as a band member set the stage for the year to come.

“I think we played a blues first to get everybody warmed up, and just hearing the other players that I was going to be playing with on a weekly basis for the rest of the year was pretty inspiring. There were people from all over the Bay Area that are attending all sorts of music schools playing with all sorts of different people nowadays. It was really an honor and an inspiration to get to work with these guys.”

Through the All-Star program’s Master Classes, which bring notable jazz musicians into the rehearsal room to give advice and inspiration to the 20 members of the All-Stars. Flocks also had the opportunity to work with the man who had inspired his love of jazz, Joshua Redman.

“Little did I know that Joshua is actually from the Bay Area and he grew up in Berkeley, going to the same high school as many of these kids I was playing with in the SFJAZZ band,” Flocks said. “All of a sudden I get the opportunity to ask him all the questions I ever wanted to ask him and hear him play his music, hear him talk about growing up playing the music in the bay area. It was a really special thing for me to get to talk to Joshua because he had always been somebody that I really looked up to and that I’d idolized…Because of SFJAZZ I got the chance to work with my hero.”

This fall, Flocks takes another step forward in his own musical career by attending the Brubeck Fellowship Program, an intensive one- or two-year full-scholarship immersion in jazz performance.

“I’m extremely honored to be participating in the Brubeck Fellowship Program. For my first year of undergraduate study I’m getting an opportunity to tour with a band, something that normally you wouldn’t get to do when you’re going to college. I think it’s going to be the first step in my career.”