Rural Retreat Band Keeps "Jazzin' it Up"

Sunday, April 26, 2015, the Rural Retreat Band program presented its spring concert. There was a wide variety of music, from Beethoven to jazz tunes, and the color guard also performed a routine. Musicians from sixth grade to seniors performed on stage in a great concert.

The music was all great and well prepared. The sixth grade band, seventh and eighth grade band, jazz band, flute quartet, saxophone quartet, and high school band all performed on stage that night. At the end of the program, all the band members performed on stage as a large ensemble. The music was all entertaining, with some favorites being jazz band and Zachary Sheckles’s solo performance, but there were some flaws.

The concert was an entire two hours long, which is a bit lengthy. The transitions between groups was odd, due to the rearranging of chairs on the stage. This problem could have been easily fixed if the chairs were set up for the largest ensemble that would perform, and leave those chairs present until the end of the concert when the color guard could perform, but these awkward chair moving transitions added unnecessary length to this concert. Also, some of the performances were arranged in an odd order: the color guard performed their routine in the middle of the concert, calling for the stage to be entirely cleared and then reset, and the high school band performed the Star Spangled Banner before their performance, which was towards the end of the concert anyway.

Despite these small flaws in the concert, the Rural Retreat band program is growing stronger each and every year. More and more groups and performances are being done each year, and the new students coming into the program are faced with a great variety of choices. Congratulations to all those who performed Sunday, those who help with the band program, and the band parents.

Dylan Crigger