After marching band wraps up season, members look ahead

After months of rigorous practice, the marching band performed En Garde one last time at the Bands of America Southern California regionals competition in Long Beach on Oct. 29, finishing seventh out of 10 finalists.

Despite the earlier end of the season, some students are already preparing for next year’s marching season, whether they’ll experience it as a rising senior adjusting to new roles within the SHS marching band, or as a college freshman exploring the music world on a completely different scale.

Due to complaints about last year’s long season, the music directors decided to make the SoCal regionals the marching band’s final show. If the season had continued, the band would have marched at the James Logan competition in mid-November, and the Los Gatos holiday parade at the beginning of December.

“It was a good way to end the season, just with one final big trip,” senior band major Adrianna White said. “For all the seniors, it was kind of ending it the same way we began our seasons as freshmen, with SoCal being our big show. So it was a nice circle of events.”

White is one of the few seniors continuing with marching band in college, having “fallen in love with the competition and the intensity of marching band.” She plans to try out for drum corps over summer, and also hopes to work with other bands and winter percussions during the school year.

Another senior, Ally Kim, played in both the orchestra and band for three years, until she quit orchestra for her senior year after “falling in love with marimba.” She played marimba in the front ensemble, which is also called “the pit.”

“I cried after the last performance, because I felt like I’d probably never get to be on the field like that ever again in my life,” Kim said.

Laughing, Kim expressed that she wanted to continue music in college, though her future in band looked “grim,” since college marching bands do not have pits and joining an independent drum corps would require too much time and money. However, she hopes to take private lessons for marimba and possibly join the orchestra on violin.

“The experience I had with percussion through marching band and winter percussion was so amazing,” Kim said. “And now that I’m really done with marching band, I’m just thinking back to looking up at all the people in the stadiums — and that makes me sad, but a good kind of sad.”

Senior drum major Jaewoo Lee plans to major in trombone performance in college. Depending on the school he enters, Lee will continue to immerse himself in music, playing in the orchestra and band, taking lessons with professors and attending generic music classes such as theory and history.

Since he will be focusing on concert band and orchestral playing, Lee most likely won’t be able to participate in marching band.

While the seniors plan for their futures in college, juniors in the marching band are beginning to plan how they will take on the seniors’ roles in next year’s season.

Junior Crystal Sun looks forward to mentoring younger students, and “hopefully being able to create the kind of fun experiences that [her] seniors did that made [her] stay in band.”

Many students also hope to use their experience to help underclassmen with difficulties that arise in marching.

“As an incoming senior, my goal extends beyond learning my part of the show and making sure no band member is left behind,” junior Alex Tran said. “While memorizing music is a challenge in itself, the aspect of putting it to extremely precise movements can be daunting at times. It will be part of my job to make new band members more comfortable in such a challenging activity.”

According to Tran, now that most of the big changes thrown at the band, such as the new schedule and changes in staff, have had time to settle, the band’s level of performance can “only go up from here.”

With the end of an intense marching season, many band members have had a chance to look back on their achievements. Despite some disappointment in the band’s finish at SoCal, the 2016 season was a memorable one.

“I definitely feel that this year’s performance was one of the best I’ve experienced,” Sun said. “Even though our placing at the SoCal competition was a little disappointing, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the group work this hard or have this much fun.”