This is an all boys private high school. They do have concert bands, etc, but I believe everyone marches. Marching band is their favorite! They recruit girls from nearby all girls schools. The band director has been making a huge effort to visit all of the feeder grade schools and that was part of his reason for putting this promo video together too.
My husband went to this same high school and the band was closer to 100 members then. I think changes in leadership cause lots of fluctuation. This is our director's 4th year and I am really hoping he stays awhile.
Did I mention.... they are going to WDW in June!
I think leadership very much has a lot to do with this (funny, just got an email as I was typing this from Music for All -Bands of America
). When I was in high school our marching band was the top in the nation (parade). They won the grand national parade championship several times. We had amazing band directors (I was in orchestra though). They were about 300 members strong. The director left several years ago and the new director just isn't as good. They have 50 members and are just terrible.
Our marching band is the best in the area. We have about 185 members and do well at national caliber competitions. It is an amazing experience for the kids. Many kids from our band program go on to march in college as well. One of DD's friends marched at Notre Dame (with Taylor Swift's brother they are all happy to tell
). The discipline kids learn in marching band is amazing. These kids practice 8 hours/day for a month and a half in the summer, on asphalt in 95 degree heat. They work harder then any of the sports teams. They learn the importance of being on time and what one small misstep can do to the overall performance of the band--what it REALLY means to be a team member. The top 10% of our graduating class, year after year after year are ALL band kids.
I wish my daughter had marching band but we are lucky to even have a band at all. The remaining district band teacher retires this year, so we might be bandless next year.
This is so sad. There is so much data out there about how important music programs are to overall learning. One stat they had at our concert on Tuesday was that kids that are in band score over 100 points higher on SAT's then kids that are not in band (or orchestra).
We are EXTREMELY lucky to have phenomenal support from our school administration and from our community. We have the largest band program in our state. We have 8 concert bands, 4 jazz bands, a large marching band, percussion ensembles as well as several solo and other small group ensembles. Most of the honor band selections around the area are full of kids from our high school. Half of the kids in the state band are from our school. We have 3 full time band directors at our high school and 5 in each of the middle schools that feed to our high school. We are VERY, VERY, VERY lucky to have this. We have about 2000 students in our high school.
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