01 OC Mag 01-24

TUNED IN |
Swing
TEXT BY ALEISA SCHAT | FILE PHOTOS
Hollander Jazz energizes Orange City arts scene
time
When Orange City resident Drew
Lemke founded Hollander
Jazz, he did it for a simple
reason — he missed playing jazz music.
“I had a bunch of friends that also just
wanted to play jazz,” 29-year-old Lemke
said. “Being fresh out of college, I also just
missed the opportunity that I got to play in
all of those ensembles. I just kind of started
thinking, ‘Well, maybe I’ll just start my own
band.’”
Lemke graduated with a music education
degree from Northwestern College in Orange
City in 2017 and has been the MOC-Floyd
Valley Middle School band director since
August of the same year.
In 2020, Lemke gathered musicians from
Orange City and surrounding communities
and put together a jazz orchestra.
The band’s first regular gigs were sponsored
by the Orange City Arts Council, the
nonprofit organization that showcases the
work of artists and supports arts education
in the Sioux County seat community.
“It kind of started mainly as a thing we did
with OC Arts in the summer,” Lemke said.
Orange City Arts’ summer OnStage
concert series brings musicians from far
and wide to perform outdoor concerts on
Wednesday evenings in Windmill Park
downtown.
“I definitely attribute a lot of our being
able to get started to OC Arts — providing
those summer series for us and asking us
to come back and play,” he said. “That was
amazing, getting us going, and then I started
to save up for the next purchase of a speaker
or a piano, or more music, and we’ve started
to grow a little bit more.”
The group began performing as a full jazz
orchestra, which includes around 20 musicians,
and as word spread about the group,
Hollander Jazz began receiving invitations to
perform in smaller ensembles, too, at community
events and weddings.
The group plays in varying configurations,
depending on the event and the number of
musicians available to play on a given date.
“It kind of depends on the request I get.
Basically, I just ask people, do you want the
big band or do you want a smaller combo,
and then we kind of build it from there,”
Lemke said.
Along with performing at public and private
events across northwest Iowa, the group
puts on a regular Christmas show at the Unity
Christian High School’s Knight Center in
Orange City.
“The first year we did it, it was like, ‘Well,
we’ve still got some standards mixed in — but
it’s mostly Christmas. Now, we have enough
to do Christmas the whole set,” Lemke said.
Hollander Jazz offers
ensembles of various
sizes for whatever best
fits the venue. The group
is available for public and
private events.
14 OC MAGAZINE | SPRING 2024