Award-winning young musician Kyle Athayde
gets his DownBeat with Sibelius

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. - The Kyle Athayde Quintet has been honored by DownBeat magazine, the "bible" of jazz musicians and fans, as the nation's top high school instrumental group. The quintet's 17-year-old namesake and leader also won a DownBeat Outstanding Performance award for his solo work on trumpet and vibraphone - one of four since he started entering the competition in 2002, when he captured first place.

The quintet, a jazz group from Acalanes High School in Lafayette, Calif., was picked from a field of 878 applicants and also includes Chaise Baird, 17 (tenor sax); John Sloat, 18 (alto sax); Will Ewing, 16 (drums); and bassist Jake Geir, 17.

Athayde, who also plays piano and drums, began playing violin at age four, switched to trumpet when he was nine and took up the vibes at age 14. In seventh grade, he began playing professionally with his father, trumpeter and pianist Robert Athayde, who teaches music at Stanley Middle School in Lafayette.

The younger Athayde plays in the wind ensemble at Acalanes and will be a senior this fall. Upon graduation, he hopes to audition for admission into the Juilliard School of Music in New York City.

In the meantime, he's done plenty outside the classroom. The young jazzman has received two private lessons from legendary trumpet virtuoso Wynton Marsalis and was even invited to join Marsalis at a New York concert. He has toured both the U.S. and Japan, and has played with the Gibson/Baldwin Grammy Jazz Ensembles, the Monterey Jazz Festival's 2005 Next Generation Jazz Orchestra, and the San Francisco Jazz All-Star High School Big Band.

He has also performed as a student-in-residence at the Brubeck Institute Summer Jazz Colony in Stockton (Calif.) and has participated in workshops led by jazz greats Clark Terry, Chris Potter, Chick Corea, Steve Turre and Benny Golson.

Although he practices diligently, Athayde also spends a great deal of time listening to other performers - even in his sleep - by keeping a CD player next to his bed and setting it to repeat the same disc throughout the night.

Athayde is also a composer, and is currently using Sibelius software to write a big band arrangement that he hopes to perform with the Monterey Jazz Festival's orchestra.

"By using Sibelius," he says, "if I hear something I don't like, I can alter it on the spot. I like that it is easy to use and that I can listen back to my writing.

"My playing is also getting better," he adds. "As my understanding of big band writing increases, my harmonic and melodic concepts greatly advance."

Athayde is encouraging his fellow band members to follow his lead and start composing with Sibelius as well.

"If we all learn to write music, then we can give each other suggestions with our tunes," he says, "and that will ultimately make the group play better."

To date, there are more than 100,000 Sibelius users worldwide, including television composer Alf Clausen, musician Pat Metheny, composer Sammy Nestico, choral composer John Rutter, guitarist Andy Summers and conductor Michael Tilson-Thomas.

Notes to editors

• Sibelius is the world's market leader in music notation software.
• Sibelius was founded in 1993 by Ben and Jonathan Finn to sell music notation software for the Acorn computer. The Sibelius notation software was released for Windows and Mac in 1998/99.
• Since then the Sibelius Group has developed 13 additional music products for the professional, educational and home user, ranging from Internet publishing to guitar software.
• Sibelius has customers in over 100 countries.
• Sibelius is used in 50% of schools in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
• Sibelius is endorsed by the Royal Academy of Music and is used by all the major music academies and colleges: the Royal College of Music, Trinity College of Music, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, the Juilliard School, Berklee School of Music, the Sibelius Academy in Finland, the Royal College of Music in Stockholm.
• The world's leading music publishers including Music Sales, Hal Leonard and Yamaha use Sibelius.
• Sibelius was recently awarded a prestigious Queen's Award for Innovation.
• Sibelius is headquartered in London, UK, with a US subsidiary, Sibelius USA Inc., in California and a new Australian subsidiary, Sibelius Australia Pty Ltd, in Adelaide.