On a Wednesday evening in late October, the upstairs room of a brick building on South Wolcott Street will fill with the sound of horns and rhythm sections working through charts together — some of the players still in high school, some of them a few years past it. The Natrona County High School Big Band and the University of Wyoming Jazz Combo share a bill at CitiWerks Cafe on Oct. 21 at 6 p.m., a free concert open to the public.
The pairing is the point. Natrona County School District's announcement framed the evening as a chance for high school musicians to stand next to college players, and for the audience to hear what jazz education in Wyoming is producing at two different stages of the pipeline. "The collaboration provides NCHS students with a unique opportunity to perform alongside university musicians while showcasing the strength of jazz education in Wyoming," the district's release said.
The NCHS Big Band is not a casual after-school group. It is an audition-based ensemble, and its students play a mix of traditional big band repertoire and modern jazz arrangements. The band's resume has grown well beyond Casper: in April 2025, it opened for the Jazz Ambassadors of the U.S. Army Field Band at Natrona County High School, a free concert that put a nationally touring ensemble on the same stage as the high schoolers.
The band program is led by Shawn Weis, with assistant director Zane Romanek. Under Weis, the school's marching band has become known for an unusually ambitious schedule — a new show for every home football game, in the manner of a college band rather than a typical high school program. In 2023 that approach landed the Mustangs in Metallica's national marching band contest with a cover of "Lux Aeterna," the only Wyoming band in a field of more than 100. The jazz side of the program draws on the same pool of students and the same appetite for material that stretches them.
The University of Wyoming side of the bill brings its own depth. The UW Department of Music runs several jazz combos alongside the Wyoming Jazz Ensemble and Jazz Ensemble II, with combos directed in recent years by faculty including Ben Markley, Tom Hartnett, Michael Johnston and Andy Wheelock, who directs the university's jazz studies program and leads the Wyoming Jazz Ensemble, the combos, a samba bateria and the Pan-Afro-Latin percussion group. Combo repertoire at UW has ranged from Joe Henderson and Herbie Hancock to Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins and Wayne Shorter — the standard small-group canon that a high school big band player graduating into college jazz would meet on day one.
The venue suits the occasion. CitiWerks occupies one of Casper's oldest commercial buildings, a structure put up in 1896 at 162 S. Wolcott St., between the corner of Second and Wolcott and the Wolcott Galleria. The building has been reworked as a coworking and business incubator space by Brucke Bauen Casper LLC, which also owns the Atrium Plaza, Bishop's Corner and the Durbin Center. Exposed brick from earlier iterations of the building is visible on the upper tier, and the large gathering room upstairs has hosted local events for well over a century — dances and town meetings in its earlier life, and in its current one a steady rotation of concerts and arts programming. CitiWerks has advertised the space for events of up to 200 people, with a presentation area wired for 4K video and sound. Arts organizations in Casper have used it as a listening room; ARTCORE has listed CitiWerks among its Casper venues.
That history gives the Oct. 21 concert a slightly different flavor than a school auditorium performance. A big band in a room with exposed rafters and a century of Casper gatherings behind it is a reminder that jazz in Wyoming has long been a community affair — played in halls, cafes and meeting rooms rather than only in concert halls.
Admission is free, and the district invited community members of all ages. For NCHS students, the night is a preview of the next level; for the UW players, it is a chance to play in a town that has been turning out jazz musicians for generations. For everyone else, it is an hour of live music downtown on a Wednesday evening, no ticket required.
The concert runs from 6 to 7 p.m. at CitiWerks Cafe, 162 S. Wolcott St. in downtown Casper.