About Garfield Jazz

Garfield High School Jazz is one of the truly outstanding high school jazz programs anywhere in the world.

– Earshot Jazz

Garfield High School is a public high school in Seattle and attracts students from a variety of cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. Garfield’s jazz culture has been built over 40 years and remains strong to this day. Garfield Jazz has over 80 students enrolled in the program in three levels of ensembles. Students learn the great jazz traditions including Duke Ellington Count Basie, as well as a variety of other jazz styles.

Jared Sessink

DIRECTOR OF BANDS AND JAZZ

Jared Sessink has been the Director of Bands and Jazz at Garfield High School since 2019. He oversees the activity of all concert band and jazz ensembles. 

Sessink’s teaching philosophy is centered in student voice and ownership in the learning process. He teaches through the principles of empathy, perseverance, patience, and joy through music making.

Under his leadership, Garfield has been a frequent participant in the Essentially Ellington Jazz Competition and Festival held in New York City, considered one of the most competitive high school jazz festivals in the nation. Many of his students have gone on to become educators and musicians, at institutions ranging from Berklee School of Music, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, New England Conservatory, Columbia University, and Manhattan School of Music, and more.

Sessink regularly plays his trumpet in the Magnolia Big Band in Seattle. On Monday evenings, he is the director of the North Seattle Community College Symphonic Band working with adults of all ages. He is a member of the Washington Music Educators Association and National Association of Music Education.

Mike Sundt

DIRECTOR OF JAZZ ENSEMBLE 2

Mike Sundt joins Garfield this year as the Interim Director of Orchestras. He has been teaching in Seattle public schools since 2019.

Mr. Sundt studied music at Central Michigan University and graduated in 2014 with a Bachelor’s degree in Instrumental Music Education, with a focus in double bass performance. He also has two Masters degrees in Learning & Technology and Curriculum & Instruction.

In Mr. Sundt's time teaching at Washington Middle School, his jazz ensembles received many local and national awards, including a 2023 award from Downbeat Magazine for "Outstanding Middle School Jazz Ensemble" among bands across the nation. In 2018, he was a quarterfinalist for the Grammy Museum’s “Educator of the Year” award. In 2023, he was the first recipient of the Andy Robertson Memorial Director's Award at the Bellevue High School Jazz Festival.

As a bassist, Mr. Sundt has performed around the region with a variety of ensembles, including the Pacific Cascade Big Band and the Eastside Modern Jazz Orchestra. He is a member of Washington Music Educators’ Association and the National Association for Music Education.

Abbey Blackwell

DIRECTOR OF JAZZ ENSEMBLE 3

Abbey Blackwell co-lead Garfield's Jazz Ensemble 3 last year and is excited to continue working with the group and dig in more this year as the sole director.

Since 2021, Abbey has been teaching in the Seattle Public Schools as a sub and as a music coach, thanks to boosters and programs like the Jazz Scholars. She has been teaching private bass and composition lessons for nearly a decade, and over time, has developed a teaching philosophy that goes past the traditional play and repeat approach to progressing in music. She includes ideas from Alexander technique and meditation, making sure that students don't feel physically or mentally overwhelmed, while maintaining long term and short term goals to cultivate motivation.

Abbey holds a Master's degree in Jazz and Improvised Music and a Bachelor’s of Music in Double Bass Performance from the University of Washington. Outside of teaching, Abbey performs and records her own music, as well as with a wide variety of groups in and around Seattle, ranging from orchestral (Seattle Modern Orchestra) to avant-garde (Wayne Horvitz's Electric Circus) to songwriters (Tomo Nakayama), and of course jazz (Neil Welch, Ray Larsen, Marco de Carvalho).