Well, it's Thursday and raining. That can mean only one thing...we have marching band rehearsal tonight! Oh yeah!
My wife is the band director at Penns Grove High School in South Jersey, and I teach her marching band. It's an interesting gig. One of the cool things about it is that there's a permanent scaffolding structure that allows you to get pretty high up and clean drill. The whole staff could fit up there if we wanted to. It's very convenient.
Anyway, unlike some other places I've taught Penns Grove does not rehearse on a parking lot. Yes, we actually have our own grass field with lights! Good stuff, but it makes rehearsing in inclement weather difficult. The kids don't care...you rehearse in the rain and the mud sometimes. That's just how it goes, but we have to take into consideration that it absolutely destroys the field. Oh well...we'll be out there tonight no matter what since this Saturday we have our first performances.
The opener is pretty cool. The show is a "comic bookey" detective/criminal/dame story. In the first act, the "dame" shows off her prized artwork which is then stolen by a masked burglar. The music in the beginning is all original and then it goes into an arrangement of the "Mission Impossible" theme song. Visually and musically it's pretty good for this time of year. Like many schools, it's hard to get the kids to really put a whole lot of energy into anything, so it's not as clean as it could be...but it's getting there.
The second number is an original composition...a jazzy tune where we meet our detective. The Dame, completely distraught by having her ugly artwork stolen tries to hire the detective, who is rather dismissive and not really all that interested. Of course, she flashes some money under his nose and he takes the case. We have a dancer in the band who is absolutely spectacular. She's "The Dame" and is featured in this song and throughout the show. The detective is played by an actor in the school plays who agreed to be in our little production. He does a good job. Oh, and the burglar is a kid in the pit.
The first part of the closer shows our detective on the prowl. Unfortunately, he's not a very good detective and while the band is marching around playing "James Bond" material, our detective is anything but James Bond. Eventually the whole band gets the detective's attention and points him in the right direction.
Our pit is somewhat on the field and set up in a type of "lair" situation. They're all dressed as burglars, and since they're obviously bad guys, they hide behind their instruments when the detective finally figures it out and arrives on the scene. There's a playful and fun "hide and seek" section between the detective and the pit, but he finally finds his man and they go spilling out onto the field chasing each other around.
During this and most of the rest of the show, the music is original in nature and rhythmic. The detective chases the burglar around for a bit, but loses him. The Dame isn't pleased and really starts giving the detective "the business," when he finds the burglar and finally gets the artwork back. It's hard to explain...it's all something you just need to see.
We have a cool prop that becomes, through MAGIC, a jail cell at the end of the show. The pit kids have some fun at the end as well, and we're done. There's a lot of thought and coordination that goes into doing a theme show like this, but I think that the kids appreciate it and enjoy it a lot more than if we just picked 3 songs and went out there and did that. Plus, it gives them an opportunity to put a little bit of themselves into the production instead of just acting like a bunch of robots out there for the duration of the show.
The staff is small, but good. We could really use another 2 or 3 people, but we just don't have the budget for it. It's okay, though. It's a small band, although we're the biggest we can be in our group. Hopefully the kids put the work in at home, come prepared to rehearsals, and perform when the time comes. If they do, we should be pretty successful this year. We'll see.
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