Lunch Break Big Band, directed by James Mooy, has become the first and only community college band accepted for three consecutive years as a finalist for the Monterey Next Generation Jazz Festival.

“We’re really excited to go again. The whole experience is chance of a lifetime, especially for City College,” said Gerald Smith, 22-year-old saxophonist. “This year, during our rehearsals, we were really serious and productive, and we’ve got a lot of great players.”

The festival is an annual three-day event of performances and competitions among jazz bands, combos and vocal ensembles from high schools and colleges across the country. This year, it will take place April 5-7 in Monterey, Calif.

Through blind-recorded auditions sent to Berklee College of Music in Boston, leading jazz educators selected finalists for each division.

Regarding the college band division, this year’s finalists are Santa Barbara City College, Azusa Pacific University, Eastern Washington University, Fullerton College Big Bad Band, University of Nevada, Las Vegas and University of Southern California Thornton School of Music.

The winner of each division will perform in the fall festival from Sept. 20-22 and receive a cash prize. The amount of the prize is withheld.

University of Southern California was the winner in 2011, and California State Northridge won in 2012.

“There’s like a whole formula that you can incorporate into having a strategy on winning this competition,” Smith said. “Basically, it’s just selecting the basic kinds of songs that we need to play and also having the two best soloists solo, but we don’t go for that. We’d like to have a lot of soloists. We’d like to play songs that are outside of the jazz norm.

“We’re spicing it up a little bit. We’re not in it for win. We want to have fun.”