The Flying Horse Big Band crescendos as director Jeff Rupert leads into the final suite at a concert in the Nicholson School of Communication and Media auditorium held last year on Sept. 26.
Courtesy of the College of Arts and Humanities
After weeks of rehearsal, UCF’s Flying Horse Big Band took the stage at Lincoln Center in New York City to compete in the 2026 National Collegiate Jazz Championship on Jan. 17.
This year’s iteration of the jazz championship featured 10 universities and colleges — UCF was the only school from Florida invited to perform.
“I was so focused on the music that I really didn’t take it in cause there was so much adrenaline going on in my brain,” said Tanner Goulet, junior music performance major and saxophonist in The Flying Horse Big Band.
The Flying Horse Big Band has been playing at UCF since the 1970s. Still listed in the class catalog under its original name, Jazz Ensemble I, the band changed its name in the last 20 years.
The band’s leader is Jeff Rupert, a tenor saxophonist and director of jazz studies at UCF.
Each semester, the band changes slightly as people graduate. This current rendition swings at seventeen students, ranging from engineering and computer science majors to music majors.
This open-to-all-majors policy differs from how some other colleges run their jazz ensembles, especially the colleges competing at the National Collegiate Jazz Championship.
“The interesting thing is, of the 10 bands that were there, many of them had doctoral programs in Jazz Studies,” said Rupert. “Our students, we have no doctoral program here, and all but one of our students were undergraduate students. One was a graduate student, and four of them were not music majors.”
The call to perform at Lincoln Center came out of the blue, Rupert said. Since the invite, the band has rehearsed and played several shows as preparation, even releasing an album in November of 2025.
“Anytime you have nice remarks or nice perception in life, it comes with excitement, but also the challenges of living up to that expectation,” said Rupert. “Practicing makes everybody calm down.”
After landing at an airport in Newark, New Jersey, band members trudged their equipment from buses and then onto trains.
The band reached the hotel in time for a free performance by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, which was playing a show called “Duke in Africa,” composed of Duke Ellington songs.
The next day, the band rehearsed with trombonist Chris Crenshaw, who plays in the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. He gave them some tips and reiterated some of Rupert’s big-band mantras — one of them being, “jazz is a democracy,” Goulet said. “Everybody has something to say and a job to do.”
After the rehearsal, the band played an afternoon session at Smalls Jazz Club in Greenwich Village and made it back to Lincoln Center to watch another performance of “Duke in Africa.”
On Saturday, the band performed in the second lineup. One by one, each university band was called backstage to warm up for 15 to 30 minutes. Once the bands took the stage, members sat in the same seats in which the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra members sit.
Goulet said he recalls a moment when the adrenaline wore off for just a second. His friend asked about the microphone in front of him, and he noticed he was sitting in Paul Nedzela’s seat, a baritone saxophonist for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.
“I looked down at the music, and that was when I realized: I am at the Lincoln Center, I’m in this guy’s seat, and I’m looking down at the microphone that he uses,” Goulet said.
Tanner Goulet, junior music performance major, stands up to play a saxophone solo with The Flying Horse Big Band at the Nicholson School of Communication and Media auditorium during a concert held last year on Sept. 26.
Courtesy of the College of Arts and Humanities
The Flying Horse Big Band didn’t place on the podium, but Goulet said being the only Florida university band invited to the competition meant more than a podium placement.
For Goulet, it was the chance to represent the Sunshine State, the university’s jazz studies program, Orlando and his peers on a nationally recognized stage in front of professional musicians from across the country.
“It was one of the best experiences of my life to go with my friends and play,” said Goulet.
The next day, some of the band performed a combo show in what Goulet described as a beautiful room looking out onto Columbus Circle and the city. By Monday, the band was heading back to campus.
“The students are young professionals and their youth and exuberance is something that we channel, and they really enjoy having these opportunities of premiering work or playing at the Lincoln Center,” Rupert said. “So I’m invigorated by the opportunity and really, frankly, the honor to teach the youth of America.”
Up next for The Flying Horse Big Band is a tour of Vero Beach and a performance at the Dr. Phillips Center for UCF Celebrates the Arts. There, Rupert will debut a new suite of music he’s been composing titled “An Artist Frame for Orlando.”
At the same time, the band is scheduled to release a new album.
“I think we’re at the dawn of a new era of jazz music where Americans are seeing it as America’s classical music,” said Rupert.
He spoke about the rise of jazz in the context of students being the next great leaders and our best natural resource. To his students, he said, “I want them to know that I believe in them.”
For Goulet, the performance was business-as-usual, but he said a piece of the performance will stay with them, as all the performances do.
Goulet spoke of the trip as a learning experience in building deeper trust by having each other’s backs. He said the band, or, as he puts it, “his family,” will take this lesson into every performance this semester.