With Indiana State Fair Band Day quickly approaching, the Anderson High School’s Marching Highlanders are eager to compete.
The band, which has 99 members this year, will perform “Cirque Du Ecossais.” The program depicts a circus in the late 1800s to early 1900s, with familiar music that identifiable with the time period.
Richard Geisler, the band director, said the students are working hard and added he thinks the band is “in a good early-season position right now with how they’re doing.”
“It’s very different for us,” Geisler said. “Trying to tie in bagpipes and kilts to a circus theme is a bit of a challenge, but we figured it out. The title, ‘Cirque Du Ecossais,’ is a French title which translates to ‘Scottish circus.’
“It’s kind of a retro-type show, and it’s getting kids exposure to some of the great circus marches that were famously known in live concert settings. It’s turning out to be a lot of fun.”
Last year, the Marching Highlanders won their eighth Indiana State Fair Band Day title with their program, “Scots and Soda,” transporting audiences back to a 1950s diner.
Geisler said what’s important to him is the students “doing the best they can do and making the show come to life.”
“We always tell the kids that the competition is the fun part of what we do,” Geisler said. “We don’t make the competitive part a big stressor on the kids. For us, if the kids take what we designed for them to do, they work hard, do the best they can do, and have their greatest run at the end of the year, that’s really what it’s about.
“The placement will be what the placement’s going to be, but really, we just want them to grow as musicians and as people.”
Senior Hydee Hall, a drum major in the marching band this year, said she loves how the performance is coming together.
“I think it’s a really amazing concept,” Hall said. “We have never done anything this challenging before, and we all try to put as much effort into our show to try to improve and get better, and just put the best show out there that we can.”
Junior Esmeralda Santiago Morales, a clarinet player, said she hesitated when she heard what the theme of the performance would be.
“I was confused about it,” Santiago Morales said. “I didn’t know what it was going to be like, but in the end, I trusted how our directors were going to do it. So far, I really like it. It’s something different.
“Each section has their own personality. You can be like, ‘Oh wow, look at the bagpipes doing this,’ or ‘Look at the clarinets.’ It’s so organized with the music and everything. That’s what I really like about it.”
Both Hall and Santiago Morales said the hardest part of the performance is the changing tempo, with Hall adding the range of notes adds to the challenge.
Junior Mary Lee Morris, a drum major who helps conduct the band, said she enjoys the theme of performance.
“I really love the show because I feel like it really shows off a funnier side of high school,” Morris said. “I was very scared when they first said it was going to be a circus. I wasn’t sure how the judges and the families would react to that because, especially compared to last year’s show, we had a ‘50s show. “I think with time especially, we’re going to do amazing and we definitely have a shot at winning this year.”
For Morris, the best part of marching band is the relationships she’s built with her bandmates.
“It gives you a family and so many friends to connect with,” Morris said. “You’re all together for up to 12 hours a day. You all get to connect, and you all have one thing in common. You spend up to six days a week together. You have to really bond with everybody, and I think that’s a really special part of marching band.”
This article appeared in The Herald Bulletin.