Sep 21

All We Can Say Is – WOW.

Posted in Directors' Note by Dan Carlson

We could feel it in the air on Saturday night – that calm, collected confidence before the show. The students were going to do something special. The excitement of exposing the show to the general public for the first time was thick.

And then the performance…

Yes it was our first show out, but we don’t think we’ve EVER seen a first show out quite like that one. The connection between the band and the audience was electric – it was impossible to not be drawn in. The students were focused and on fire. There was not an ounce of flatness to the show – just controlled, focused energy aimed at the audience in front of them, and if you were there, you truly experienced something magical.

We are so proud of the students and could not have asked any more out of them. Everything worked. At that point it comes down to subjectivity, and we make no apologies for who we are and what we do. We aim to entertain, and if you walked away from that show and weren’t entertained, well…you need to search for a pulse. The thrill of performance is what it’s all about, and we think the students experienced something Saturday night that they will never forget. It’s not every day that you go and spend 160+ hours with 250 other people your age to attempt to make complete magic – and that’s exactly what happened Saturday night. We want to congratulate all of the other bands on their outstanding performances and for making this activity such an exciting one. Everybody is out there working hard and putting in the countless hours to experience that thrill of performance, and we love seeing it on a broad scale. Thank you to ALL who made this outing a COMPLETE success. Let’s all look forward to doing it five more weekends!

Dan Carlson and Bob Carlson

Sep 15

Dress Rehearsal A Huge Success

Posted in Directors' Note, News by Dan Carlson

We’ve never been happier to see the band make mistakes.  That was our sentiment from last night’s two dress runthroughs.  Don’t get us wrong – there were many, many outstanding moments in last night’s runthroughs, but we learned more last night by putting the students in a true performance situation than we could have learned in a week’s worth of rehearsals.  We want to personally thank everyone, from the students who gave an amazing effort, to the roadies and chaperones who gave up more of their time to get their own reps down to make this thing click, to all of the wonderful parents, fans, and friends of the band who came out to give these students the feel of a true performance setting.  This will certainly make us better in Marshall and we are looking forward to going into competition with great confidence that we may not have had if we hadn’t done our dress rehearsal last night.

There were things that we were still adding in last night for the first time, there were things that we had in that were much better the second time, and then there were things that didn’t quite click either time – but at least we know exactly where we stand and we have the rest of the week to fix them to make this the best show we can before our performance in Marshall.

Again, we humbly thank everyone who gave up their time to make last night possible.  We hope you enjoyed the show and look forward to it’s constant and consistent improvement!

Dan Carlson and Bob Carlson