Photos: Central Illinois marching bands getting ready for the upcoming season (2024)

BLOOMINGTON— With a new school year on the horizon, most high school students are getting the last bit of summer freedom in before the semester starts.

But hundreds of area marching band students are hard at work refining their skills and memorizing music in these last few weeks.

High school bands across Central Illinois are wrapping up their band camps and preparing for a season filled with Friday night football games, parades and competitions.

Bloomington Marching Raiders

Max Chernick, band director for the Bloomington Marching Raiders, said the band includes about 140 students who will perform music like "Torn" by Natalie Imbruglia and "True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper in their show titled "Patchwork," which will follow a theme of assembling different scraps into one beautiful quilt.

"We have giant spools of thread on the field, about 5½ feet tall, that our soloist will perform from the top of. We'll have 8-foot scraps of fabric that will move around the field as the fabric gets torn apart and ... our uniforms are patchwork quilts of different patterns in red, which will be a new color for us," Chernick said. "They have really been adding a lot of themselves to the performance and it's been fun to see it come together with the drill and the choreography."

Chernick said the band has learned all of its music already and is two-thirds of the way through learning the drill formations on the field, with choreography to be added later.

"We have a lot of new staff this year, including a new assistant director of bands, and we want kids to understand that 'different' doesn't mean 'better' or 'worse,' it just means different, and we're still going to be our very best regardless of the changes," Chernick said.

The freshmen are the first group of students that did not have a fifth grade band experience due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but they have adapted well to marching, Chernick said, and the upperclassmen have been supportive in making sure they are all brought into the fold.

"We're able to put leadership positions in here and teach these kids about life," said Jarrett DeFields, the new assistant band director at BHS, and also a 2015 graduate of the school. "Band is kind of like life, and marching band is not always the most fun thing that kids like to do, but I tell them all the time that they're going to remember all these memories for years to come."

Lindsey Carstens, a senior drum major for BHS, said she likes the show's concept of individualism, and how it captures every instrument's section and intertwines them together through movement to show them as one big team.

Carstens said her goal this year is to keep the band's visual performance at a high level, and she also hopes for everyone to form friendships with each other, as she has over the last four years.

"We've all gone through our waves, our bumps and sharp turns, and we're still here, we all come to band and we work hard every time," Carstens said. "These are my people. I don't know what I would do without some of the people in this band."

Normal Marching Band

Ryan Budzinski, co-director of the Normal Marching Band, said this year's band, made up of about 150 students from both Normal Community and Normal West high schools, is playing classics such as "Singin' in the Rain" and "What a Wonderful World," as well as a piece called "A Road, A Path" written by composer Roy Magnuson, a professor at Illinois State University.

Their show, titled "Seed to Bloom," will use plant imagery to describe how humans grow throughout their lifetimes. The show is set in a garden, with props like hedges and masonry, and the students dressed in bodysuits that will resemble plants and change during the show.

"Being able to portray something on a football field that is meaningful to someone, something that's memorable and something that has an impact on the audience — when you're a performing artist, your biggest hope is that your art reaches other people,"said Budzinski, who is band director at Normal West.

Co-director Paul Carter said the band has learned the first two movements of the show, with the remaining two hopefully learned by the end of the month.

"If every student is trying to be better than they were individually yesterday, and if we as an ensemble are trying to be better every day, then we're going to continue to move in the direction we're looking for, with the excellence but also with the artistry of what we do, and try to make them into better performers," said Carter, who is band director at Normal Community.

Normal West senior and clarinet section leader Drew Jackson said he likes the artistic approach to this year's show, with everyone focusing on movement and visuals. More importantly, though, everyone is having fun and making sure they take something out of this experience, he said.

"Our sense of community — being two different high schools and showing how we can come together and create a show like this that hasn't been seen before— is exciting," Jackson said. "We just keep going forward, and we want to keep striving for more, but I don't know what that more is yet."

Normal Community senior and color guard captain Jenny Sanchez Cruz said the show's theme has been reflective of how they have developed as a band this season. She added that she and the other upper classmen have been making sure to enjoy and create as many memories as possible this year.

"I feel like marching band as a whole, especially my color guard section, they're like my second family. It's like we're all united and so close," Sanchez Cruz said. "It just creates a lot of new skills that can help you in life, and it's just an amazing experience."

In a few months, the band will be heading overseas for the, but for now, they are still deep in the parade planning process before they can ring in 2025.

U High Marching Pioneers

Jason Landes, director of the University High School Marching Band, said this year's show, titled "Stronger Together," will have the band starting in one large group before being divided through obstacles until they are brought back together at the end.

The music is an original composition called "Boundaries" by Gary Gilroy that has been adapted musically and visually for the show's theme. The color guard will be integrated into the band for this show, allowing for more group visuals.

With about 65 students in band this year, Landes said they will have two movements finished with music by the end of this week, after working on marching fundamentals all summer. They'll learn the third and final movement later on.

"It's always fun when you do have the award success at the end of competitions, but really, the bottom line for me and I hope our students is just how you feel when you walk off that field at the end of every performance," Landes said. "Whether it's a football game or it is a competition, whenever we have that performance, we want it to be our best one, and better than the last."

Landes said they will continue to work on musical elements like projection and tone to grow as musicians throughout the season, but they'll also be working on visual elements and body control when marching on the field.

"When you've got all the activities going on in school, marching bands are such a huge part of that school spirit," Landes said. "That's one of the things that we want to continue to work on in all the programs that we have here, is just that school spirit and pride in our school."

Senior drum major Lydia Wilcox said a big goal for her is to have a clean, well-polished look for the band, while also having fun and seeing their hard work pay off with how the show resonates with audiences.

Wilcox said everyone has done an amazing job lifting each other up and being respectful with each other, especially with the new class of freshman, to create a sense of community that they will hopefully foster for years to come.

"I choose band because I feel like it's a very important and rare community within a school environment where people feel like they can be at home and be their authentic selves," Wilcox said. "It's a very important environment within a high school to have a safe space for everyone."

Eureka Hornets Marching Band

Todd Stalter, director of bands at Eureka High School, said this year's show is titled "P.U.S.H." after the acronym for "persist until something happens." The underlying theme, he said, is that in order to effect change, people have to go beyond what they may be comfortable with.

"We like to think that our work ethic is something that really adds to what we do, and it's essential to our success, and that idea of persisting is something that we try to do," Stalter said.

The music has been curated by Marching Monk, which creates compositions and designs for marching bands across the country, and features unique and emotional high points through the show, Stalter said.

With around 80 students, the band has been able to get a grasp on the first two movements of the show, which Stalter said is faster than he expected, and he's proud to see that.

This year is also special, since it will be Stalter's last marching band season before his retirement.

Stalter was hired at EHS in 1991, and from 2000 to 2023, has led the marching band program to 15 state class championships atthe Illinois State Marching Band Championships at ISU.

"Even though it is my last year, I'm excited to attack it just like any other year that we do, and I'm trying to make it so that it's not about me, because it really is about the students," Stalter said. "There's time to focus on me later. This is for them, so I'm going to work just as hard or harder to make sure that the focus stays on them."

Senior clarinet section leader Ciarra Abel said this year's music is more technical than anything they have done before, and since it was first introduced to students, the concept of persistence has been resonating with each of them.

"My real goal for the band would be for everyone to take the message of the show to heart," Abel said. "If all of us persist, and if all of us push ourselves as far as we can go, we can do some really great things."

Blake Andrews, senior snare drum and drumline section leader, said he likes the show's theme this year, adding that he felt that last year's drumline was not where he wanted it to be. So, during the offseason, they practiced every Tuesday and Thursday morning just to get better.

"The whole offseason we were hoping for a harder show, and we persisted until something happened, and now we have a really cool show with some of the hardest music," Andrews said.

Andrews said that he, just like anyone else, wants to win the state championship again, but since it is Stalter's last year, he really wants to be the best drumline at Eureka.

"I was horrible, and a lot of those offseason practices were kind of, for me, to keep me consistent," Andrews said. "I just want to say that it doesn't matter if you're talented or not, if you work hard enough, you'll beat talent."