Tuesday, April 16th at 7 pm in the High School gym, the Middle School Band will perform in the Spring Concert. The band will play pieces such as “Puff the Magic Dragon,”  “Atlantis: The Lost Continent,” “Irish Song,” along with many other pieces that are still being decided. There will also be a “Mass Band” piece at the end of the concert that will incorporate all grades of the band program from Sixth to Twelfth. “It is a really cool piece that lets each grade be a part of a really intense piece of music,” said Natalie Palomo, Director of the Fair Grove band.

The students have been preparing for the concert by rehearsing their pieces everyday in class, as well as putting in hours upon hours of practice outside of class during their free time. “We are making sure the pieces make sense in little chunks, so that when we put it all together it sounds nice and clean,” stated Band Director Palomo. The same method was used to prepare the songs for the Band’s Christmas Concert which took place on December 17th, last year, which featured many Holiday songs such as “Up on the Housetop” as performed by the Sixth grade band. Seventh grade band’s  “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” and the Eighth grade band’s “Hallelujah Chorus.”

Palomo explained, “The students have had to deal with fluctuating numbers in the ensembles, and some unusual instrumentation as a result.”

This means that some students have had to play altered parts in their pieces to cover for a specific instrument that the band might not have in that piece. They’ve had to really up their game this year, since I’m pushing them pretty hard to perform more complex music that requires more time on their end outside of the classroom, added Band Director Palomo.