Vermilion Parish school bands will participate in ensemble festival

By Laura Trahan, Correspondent

LAFAYETTE - Hard work and hours of practice will begin paying off this week as local middle- and high-school bands will perform for an esteemed panel of judges in hopes of superior scores at the District III Large Ensemble Festival.
The event, which takes place at Angelle Hall at UL Lafayette over the course of three days, showcases the talents of band students from all over the district. This includes the Vermilion, Lafayette, Acadia and Iberia parishes. They play in hopes of receiving the rare Sweepstakes award, or a score of all ones, meaning “superior,” and to perform at the state level. There are two different assessments each band has to do.
“Concert bands go and perform contrasting pieces of music and then a panel of adjudicators that judge the group’s performance and provide comments,” explained Jude Gaspard, the high school band director at North Vermilion High School. “The second part is going to the sightreading room where you have a piece of music that you have never seen before and the director gets eight minutes to go over the music without the students playing it and then you perform the piece and there’s a judge in there that judges how well you do.”
Concert band proves to be a shift of some sorts, especially for high school musicians who had just been in marching band a couple of months before they begin practice. It usually takes these groups about two months to prepare for the performance, with a possible Christmas performance in between, which counts as a warm-up in a way.
“We’re in marching band all the way through November, and from November to December, we start working on Christmas concert music, and that’s a totally different sound that the band has to have from a marching band to a concert band,” said Kenny Broussard, high school band director at Erath High School. He has two groups that will play at the festival: a concert group that meets during class, and a symphonic group that meets once a week.
“We normally really start on it around January, reconditioning the sound of the band to sound like a concert band and not a marching band,” he added. “We have to have our music decided by around the end of January to be really successful.”
Kaplan High School Band Director Alex Hillard rehearses with his group on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school, and sometimes Saturdays as well. To help his students, he brings in musicians from UL to help each section understand what they are supposed to play.
“Not only does it give the students a chance to listen to how it’s supposed to sound, but it also gives them a chance to slow things down in their own sections as opposed to just playing with the entire band,” he explained.
This assessment does not only benefit the students, who can learn lots more about playing the music, responsibility and how much practice helps, but it also plays a part in the teacher evaluation program called Compass. It helps by providing feedback on a teacher’s performance and standardized test scores affect their rating, and this also goes for music teachers.
“For us, as band directors, part of our evaluation is this concert band assessment,” said Gaspard. “How our band does is actually part of our evaluation as teachers, so it’s even more important to us now.”
It is important for students to perform well during this time in order to improve their skills as performers, and doing a great job and receiving the high scores will make them more confident. There is always some things that they can improve on.
“You have to factor in the external factors of the day, like ‘did they just come back from the weekend?’ ‘Did the time just change?’ ‘Are they particularly tired because of that?’” Broussard explained. “All of those factors play in to how they play on a daily basis.”
The District III Large Ensemble Festival starts today and ends Friday. Here is a schedule of Vermilion Parish-area bands:
Wednesday:
Dozier Elementary Band - 8:30 a.m.
North Vermilion Jr. High Symphonic Band - 11:25 a.m.
Kaplan High Band - 5:30 p.m.
Thursday:
Erath Middle Band - 11:25 a.m.
Abbeville High Concert Band - 5 p.m.
Friday:
J.H. Williams Band - 10:10 a.m.
Gueydan High Band - 1:30 p.m.
Erath High Concert Band - 2 p.m.
Erath High Symphonic Band - 5 p.m.
North Vermilion High Symphonic Band - 6 p.m.