Students from Kansas City Kansas Community College’s music and audio engineering programs have received a combined 7 awards in DownBeat Magazine’s 2025 Student Music Awards (SMA). DownBeat has the widest circulation of any jazz magazine in the United States and has been recognizing student achievement at the middle school, high school and collegiate levels with the Student Music Awards since 1978.
Since KCKCC earned its first SMA in 2017, KCKCC students and faculty have received more than double the amount of awards as any other community college in the country. The seven awards earned in 2025 are the seventh-most of any school represented in the 2025 SMAs, behind only the University of Miami, the University of North Texas, the Berklee College of Music, California State-Long Beach, the Colburn Community School and Caleb Chapman's Soundhouse (two nationally known middle/high school arts academies). KCKCC's 49 SMAs in the past four years are second only to the University of Miami, and its 67 since 2017 are only bested by Miami, Caleb Chapman's Soundhouse and the University of Northern Colorado (another one of the highest-profile jazz programs in the country).
Among this year’s awards are two Community College Winners. The Jaylen Ward Trio was honored in the Small Jazz Combo category and Heidi Eberhardt was recognized in the Original Composition for Small Ensemble category for her piece “Dichotomy.”
“We are grateful to again be recognized by DownBeat Magazine for the work that our students and faculty do on a daily basis,” said Dr. Justin Binek, associate professor of music at KCKCC. “It's particularly gratifying to the full spectrum of our programs - instrumental, vocal, composition, audio engineering - be highlighted in arguably the most influential publication in the jazz world. Seeing both the Jaylen Ward Trio and Heidi Eberhardt spotlighted in articles about the winning students in different categories is even more special, and it's something that they can use in their own marketing as they continue in their journeys as performing artists.”
In addition to the two Community College Winners, KCKCC received 5 additional Outstanding Performance awards this year. These include: