

2014 Gerald Wilson Award Winner: Matt Wong, Prima Luce
Independence High School / San Francisco, CA

“Prima Luce” was performed by the Next Generation Jazz Orchestra at the 57th Annual Monterey Jazz Festival on September 21, 2014.

Each year since 2005 at the Next Generation Jazz Festival Presented by Monterey Jazz Festival, the Big Band Composition Competition is open to student composers currently enrolled in high school.

Compositions are judged by college-level music faculty, and the winning composer receives the Gerald Wilson Award, named in honor of the late legendary composer, arranger and trumpeter who was a friend of Monterey Jazz Festival for many years.

The winning composition is performed on the Jimmy Lyons Stage in the Arena at the annual Monterey Jazz Festival by the Festival's all-star student band, the Next Generation Jazz Orchestra, and the student composer is given the Gerald Wilson Award and a cash prize.

Matt Wong, is a pianist, composer, and arranger and is a senior at the Independence High School in San Francisco, California. Matt began playing piano at age six, and his musical influences include Herbie Hancock, Thelonious Monk, Jimmy Smith, John Coltrane, Red Garland, Monty Alexander, Henry Butler, Chick Corea, and Robert Glasper.

He is currently a member of the award-winning SFJAZZ High School All-Stars Jazz Orchestra and Combo;, and the Jazzschool’s Studio Band in Berkeley. He regularly performs solo, with his own group, the Matt Wong Trio, and as a member of other ensembles in venues around the Bay Area, including the SFJAZZ Center, Yoshi’s San Francisco and Oakland, Davies Symphony Hall, the Jazzschool, the Sound Room, and Stanford University’s Bing Concert Hall. He has additionally appeared at the Blue Note in New York City, Jazz Alley in Seattle, the Deer Head Inn in Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania, and the Monterey Jazz Festival.

As a composer and arranger, his big band compositions have been performed by the Realistic Orchestra, the Berklee Rainbow Band, and the SFJAZZ High School All-Stars Orchestra. Some of his recent achievements in 2014 include being selected to the GRAMMY® Jazz Session Combo; winning both the ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award and Berklee College of Music’s Herb Pomeroy Jazz Composition & Arranging Contest; a DownBeat Student Music Award for Original Composition; and a Outstanding Soloist Award at the 2014 Next Generation Jazz Festival. He was also selected for the 2014 Brubeck Institute Summer Jazz Colony in Stockton, California.


Prima Luce / Performed by the 2014 Next Generation Jazz Orchestra (Complete)

I love GOD
His grace and His love for us in a massive abundance

The 68th Annual Monterey Jazz Festival will take place at the Monterey County Fairgrounds September 26-28, 2025.

??.... 12 Dec➡marks the first day of my 21 years old on this planet and I am excited for what is to come?❤. It took me a super long time to get to this point. Being excited rather than fearing. Feeling this amount of love for myself. ✋
Really fucking believing in ME! ?
My goals, what I have to offer the world and each human I come in contact with. 
It’s been one hell of a journey and I’ve never been more proud of it. All of it. Good and bad. 
I have been blessed with an INSANE amount of support and love and I am really seeing that more than anything else. 
I’m super lucky for my husband?❤ always supporting me in whatever way he able and willing. Always loving me. Being the most amazing person ever!!
I am fortunate for friends.? My god truly some of the most amazing friends anyone could ever ask for????????. Those who have been there and the new ones who just arrived- I fucking love you to PIECES!! To all who came, all who left, all who have stayed, and those still to come and go. ""THANK YOU?"

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Music is my passion there's nothing else to say, I mainly repost Jazz and Blues Tracks sometime Pop, I am not particularly interested in House Techno Hip Pop,etc.