The Coventry High School Band has had its own difficulties over the past few years due to Covid. The Honors Band only had sixteen members last year, and the Concert Band only had four. This was a drastic decrease from pre-covid numbers of around fifty. However, there is still hope for the music program. The Band gained ten new members this year. The Honors Band gained one new member from the Concert Band to help make up the holes left by the five seniors from last year, bringing the member count to twelve.
Did you know that our high school has a concert, marching, and jazz band? Members of the concert band also are members of the marching band as part of the class requirements. Jazz band is mostly made up of Honors Band members, but anyone who plays an instrument can join with the band director’s permission.
We’ve all had difficulties over the last few years because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and whatever your difficulties may have been, you changed because of them. While some changes were positive, others were not.
The Coventry High School Band has had its own difficulties over the past few years due to Covid. The Honors Band only had sixteen members last year, and the Concert Band only had four. This was a drastic decrease from pre-covid numbers of around fifty. However, there is still hope for the music program. The Band gained ten new members this year. The Honors Band gained one new member from the Concert Band to help make up the holes left by the five seniors from last year, bringing the member count to twelve.
While these new numbers are promising, the band program still isn’t out of the woods yet. With the seven graduating seniors leaving, all of whom are in the Honors Band, the band program might be very different next year.
With most of the Concert Band members new to playing instruments, they might not move up to Honors Band next year. The Concert Band also didn’t have any low brass players join this year. Low brass includes trombone, tuba, euphonium, and sousaphone. While one percussion player from that class has decided to try trombone, we still might be lacking a low brass section next year if no new low brass players join the band.
You might be wondering about the difference between an Honors Band and a Concert Band. The Honors Band plays more challenging and higher-level music. Honors Band also plays at music festivals and goes on field trips throughout the year to promote the band to a younger audience to get more people interested in joining the band in middle school and staying throughout high school.
The Band program might be reduced to only one class next year, which would severely reduce the amount of exposure that the band gets. Less exposure leads to less awareness about the band’s existence, and that leads to less interest in joining the band. That leads to not enough people to run the class.
Two years ago there were thirty members of the band. Last year the band had twenty members. This year we started increasing our member count and are up to twenty-four members, twelve in each class.
The Band also does marching band events and performances that increase publicity for the band. Some of the events include home football games, Unified assemblies, pep rallies, Thanksgiving Day football games, and two parades.
Things are starting to look up for the music program and we can hope for this to continue into next year.
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