Alumni and Friends, Campus Wide, Horton School of Music and Performing Arts

The first CSU alumni jazz band honors Sterbank’s 25th year at CSU

By John Kerrigan | March 6, 2025

Photo: Jonnie Amado directs the Alumni Jazz Band created to surprise Mark Sterbank.

On February 17 the first CSU Alumni Jazz Band put on a surprise performance to celebrate Professor Mark Sterbank’s 25th year and 50th jazz ensemble at CSU.

Sterbank, a professor of music, teaches studio saxophone and directs the jazz ensembles on campus. As a graduate of the Eastman School of Music and University of New Orleans, Sterbank is well known in the Charleston music scene playing lead tenor saxophone for the Charleston Jazz Orchestra. He also plays regularly with Grammy winning artists Charlton Singleton and Quenton Baxter.

The Alumni Jazz Band was led by recent alumnus Jonnie Amado, who was able to put together a band of musicians with representation from almost every ensemble that Sterbank has instructed in his 25 years at CSU.

“Sterbank has had a huge impact on my life, and by the looks of yesterday, the lives of many others. He is a truly passionate teacher and wonderful friend. It’s the whole reason why I put the alumni band together,” Amado said.

Members of the band came from all over South Carolina, with a few coming from Georgia and even one from Wisconsin to surprise their former professor.

During the concert, Sterbank was invited on stage to conduct the last song that the alumni band played. He said the effort put into honoring him was “humbling.”

Amado, who graduated in 2024, said it took almost a year to put the concert together, calling about 50 different former students of Sterbank’s. He even got Sterbank’s wife in on the surprise. The band had a rehearsal a day before the concert, and a dress rehearsal the day of the concert then put on the surprise performance for Sterbank.

“To put something like this together shows the kind of students he created as well as the kind of person he is, someone who lives through Christ every day,” Amado said.

CSU’s official 50th Jazz Ensemble concert under Sterbank on March 25 paid tribute to the first 49 bands by playing some of the best arrangements played throughout the years, including a couple tunes played by the very first band on their set list.