Calkins: Want to feel better about MSCS? I give you Ollie Liddell and his fabulous band.
Ollie Liddell, the band director at Central High, works with his jazz band on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. Liddell comes in at 7 a.m. and leaves at 7 p.m. to provide a space for his students to practice. (Brad Vest/Special to The Daily Memphian)
Geoff Calkins
Geoff Calkins has been chronicling Memphis and Memphis sports for more than two decades. He is host of "The Geoff Calkins Show" from 9-11 a.m. M-F on 92.9 FM. Calkins has been named the best sports columnist in the country five times by the Associated Press sports editors, but still figures his best columns are about the people who make Memphis what it is.
They crowded around a single cellphone, waiting for the news.
This was in the Central High School band room. Two dozen kids — members of the jazz band — stood silent as they watched.
Would they be picked to perform at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts?
Could they possibly have made the cut?
Hundreds of high school jazz bands audition to be invited to the Essentially Ellington contest in May. Not just from all over the country, from all over the world.
“Only 30 bands make it,” said Ollie Liddell, 48, the director of bands at Central. “They livestream the results from New York. We had all kinds of technical problems trying to watch. So we wound up watching on a cellphone.”
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