Under the bright stadium lights of Benny Pierce Field, four drum majors saluted toward bleachers filled with students, parents and staff. Across the turf, performers found their positions along the yard lines as the marching band began its halftime show at the Sept. 12 home football game vs. Overfelt.
The band’s field production for 2025 is titled “The Thread Between Us” and is a celebration of legacy.
Music director and Class of 2011 alumnus Jason Shiuan, now in his 10th year teaching at the school, reworked elements from the band’s 2007 performance — his freshman-year show, “Boundless” — into a new design for the show.
It includes selections from four pieces: “Fence” by Moses Sumney and Son Lux, “Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber” by Paul Hindemith, “Oblivion” by Astor Piazzolla and “The Line” by Twenty One Pilots. The ensemble remains large, with about 200 members.
The idea for this year’s show surfaced last fall on the bus ride home from the band’s final competition at SoFi Stadium, when percussion director Sean Clark — who helps lead the design process — began pitching concepts. The staff built the show around the “red string of fate,” a belief in an invisible thread that ties soulmates across distance and time.
“We used that abstract idea to connect my experience as a high schooler to our students now,” Shiuan said. “No one does this activity in isolation. You inherit a legacy and you add on to it.”
Design choices throughout the performance reflect Shiuan’s personal favorites from “Boundless,” while others are new elements meant to emphasize the theme of legacy. The final movement includes “quotes” of music from his freshman-year show, weaving in familiar melodic lines that alumni may recognize with a sense of nostalgia.
To complement its theme, the show features a metallic spool-shaped prop near the sideline, serving as the centerpiece for the color guard’s choreography and a platform for soloists.
One major change from past years is the front ensemble’s placement. Instead of staying along the sideline, the percussionists are now arranged diagonally across part of the field, allowing the rest of the performers to march between them — something the band has never done.
Preparation for the show begins long before the band’s first competitions in October. During the first week of August, the annual band camp introduces students to music and choreography, so performers start the season with a grasp of fundamentals and part of the show.
“There’s a lot of trust between the directors and all the performers that everyone will learn their music and memorize it before they come to rehearsal,” senior drum major Matthew Liu said. “So far, I think we’ve been doing a very good job of being prepared for rehearsals, and we’ve been progressing very, very well.”
The other drum majors are senior Anthony Luo, junior Ethan C. Lee and senior Jet Tsang.
Beyond clean sets and strong sound, the band’s goals are personal: Staff hope students feel they have added to the program’s legacy and made it their own by November. Shiuan’s hope is that a decade from now, people will still be talking about this show.
He also wants students to carry what they’ve learned — the discipline and commitment from long rehearsals, the confidence from performing in front of large audiences, and the sense of connection formed with teammates — into other parts of their lives.
“That can be performance, community or friendships. If a ninth-grader can’t tell left from right now, next year they’re a master and they can help the next generation. It’s about making ourselves better as an organization, as performers and as humans,” Shiuan said.
For some students, that means applying leadership skills to future careers or clubs. For others, it’s the friendships and memories that endure long after showtime.
“You can apply legacy to anything. If you join a company or start one, you’re building something others will carry. If you have a family, your children are your legacy,” Shiuan said. “I hope students are thinking about that when they perform.”
The band will perform at halftime during varsity football games on Sept. 26, Oct. 17 and Nov. 7. Featured events include senior night on Oct. 10, the FUHSD Expo on Oct. 11 at Homestead High, the Cupertino Tournament of Bands on Oct. 25 at Cupertino High and the Western Band Association NorCal Supershow on Nov. 8 at Sacramento State University.
