This April 7, 2026, the LHS Jazz Collective, the highest of three jazz ensembles at LHS, received what might just be the best news possible: they were invited to perform at the Midwest Clinic International Band and Orchestra Conference. This achievement made history and is an immense honor that a South Dakota band has not received in decades.
The LHS Jazz Collective has been trying for about three years now to get invited to the clinic. The audition process is really just recording a video of the musicians playing three different pieces of varying styles and sending it in. Then, a committee reviews every band’s submissions and picks the top four bands to perform at the clinic. This is a huge honor for the Jazz Collective to be invited to the Clinic, and it has only ever happened one other time, when Cresbard made the clinic in the 70s for concert band.
“It is the highest honor we can receive, because it is validated amongst the entire world… and here we are, a public school from South Dakota, getting to represent our program on that stage. I don’t think it could mean more than what it does,” said Drew Balta, the director of the Collective.
The Jazz Collective has recently been very successful, and this is the peak of their recent success. They have performed well on the national level at several competitions, such as the Basically Basie Competition at the Kansas Jazz Summit, and are well-known all over the Midwest as one of the top jazz programs. The Collective puts in numerous hours of individual practice outside of rehearsal and extra rehearsal practice to achieve this level of excellence and always works extremely hard for perfection.
“We’ve auditioned the last couple of years… we kind of just wrote it off as something we couldn’t get. We almost didn’t even send in our audition this year because we didn’t think we had any chance. I was surprised by the news, and I didn’t think Lincoln would ever be able to achieve this,” said senior trumpet player Ethan Ohling.
This truly stands out as a moment in the LHS band’s history and will forever be engraved in not only the program but the school’s memory. The clinic takes place in December of this year and is a massive conference of band and orchestra directors from around the world. The Jazz Collective will play an hour of music for a crowd of band students and directors. The students are really excited for this opportunity and are proud that their hard work paid off.
