Band Prepares for Contest with Pre-UIL Concert

Sloka Chandrasekaran, Social Media Coordinator| April 12, 2019

  • Head Band Directors Thomas Turpin does a breathing exercise with the Wind Ensemble.

    Courtesy of the Westwood Warrior Band
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  • Students in Wind Symphony patiently sit with their instruments before their performance.

    Courtesy of the Westwood Warrior Band
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Friends and family gathered to watch the band perform in the Pre-UIL concert in the band hall on Wednesday, April 3. The top two bands, Wind Ensemble and Wind Symphony, worked countless hours both during and outside of school to ensure success for their UIL contest in late April.

“I was pretty nervous for the concert,“ Liam Benner ‘21 said. “I‘m a percussionist, and we had a limited amount of time to practice with the full band, but I knew this would be a great opportunity to get feedback and work towards improvement.“

The first band to play was the Wind Symphony, directed by Brittany Dacy, the assistant band director. The band started off with Galop by Dmitri Shostakovich, a short movement in his Eighth Symphony, followed by Strange Humors by John Mackey, representative of a merging of musical cultures, combining music from the East all the way to African drumming. The band ended their performance with a very expressive and powerful piece, Give Us This Day by David Maslanka.

“My favorite piece that we played has to be Strange Humors,“ Connor Galley ‘20 said. “It’s so crazy and fun, and you never know what to expect when you play or listen to the piece.”

The final band to perform was the Wind Ensemble, led by Band Director Thomas Turpin. The first piece the band played was March from Symphonic Metamorphosis by Paul Hindemith, a stylistically different piece with a focus on brass. They followed this piece with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, by Paul Dukas, used in the 1941 Disney cartoon, Fantasia. The band’s final piece was longer and jazzy, a piece entitled Starry Crown by Donald Grantham. Throughout both performances, the judges heavily critiqued both technique and musicality in order to help both bands focus on specific parts of their music to improve for their UIL concert.

“For the limited amount of time we had for these three really challenging pieces, I think it went well,” Julia Crowley ‘19 said. “I’m proud of our band for how we performed tonight and I know we’ll be able to improve even more in the coming weeks.”