Brayden Southern
Sugar Beet Staff Reporter
The Garden City High School band comes marching into a new school year with new music, a new theme, and new formations. The band’s school year closed last year with nearly two-thirds of the kids traveling to Orlando, Florida and visiting the theme parks and leading the Memorial Day parade at Magic Kingdom. Garden City’s marching stampede was the only only band that got to lead the three o’ clock parade. Zylus Artega, a junior member of the marching band said
“the Disney trip was amazing, we went to four different parks I believe, we went to Epcot, Animal Kingdom, Disney World, and Universal Studios. All of which had fantastic rides and the parade a whole different type of experience. Over all, the trip was amazing.”
The marching band returned home and immediately began planning for the next school year.
Last year the marching band’s theme was outer-space themed which included formations portraying other planets, such as Jupiter, the sun, and the moon. This year the marching band has taken on the theme of ‘Never More.’ Mr. Sobba, the marching band instructor at GCHS says the idea behind this theme is
“based off a couple Edgar Allan Poe short shorties, and we’re utilizing music from a group called the Alan Parsons Project. They did an entire album of music that was based off of pieces by Edgar Allan Poe, and we have those pieces and they’re woven into the show. So it’s a little dark, there’s some creepy sounds to it and it’s a lot of fun.”
To go along with the music, this year the marching bands formations include a raven, the moon, infinity symbols and arrows. The raven is significant to the theme of the show because Poe wrote a poem titled ‘The Raven,’ and this is one of his well known works, the raven is shown many times by the band not only in the formation, but also on the shirts that the marching band sports, a fellow band member actually drew the raven’s head that is printed on the shirts worn by the instrumentalists.
The inspiration for the ‘Never More’ theme of this years show came from a company that Mr. Soba and the band department partners with known as Pulse Productions. Pulse Productions works with the department to find and coordinate the best possible show. The actually idea for this years show was brought to Soba by Pulse Productions, the show is original to GCHS this year. Garden City is the only high school that is partaking and executing this Edgar Allen Poe ‘Never More’ theme behind their show.
The marching band at Garden City High School practices to make perfection, the members of the marching band are at the school and on the field practicing at 7:20 a.m. daily and goes on rehearsing into first hour when the class period ends at 8:40 in the morning. The group of also has multiple practices per week after school gets out. All of these hours of practice and rehearsal are put in so the musicians can perform at a high caliber during the schools football games, various other sports events, parades, and for competition.
The Buffalo marching stampede is set to compete in three organized competitions throughout this semester. For the first of the three the stage is being set in Manhattan, Kansas at central station on October the sixth. Garden City High’s marching band will compete against fifty other bands at this first event. The band is also going to be competing in the WAC league competition in Liberal on October sixteenth and then again four days later at Kansas Band Masters Association on the twentieth of October. The way that the bands are judged at these at these events is similar to that of golf, the lower score you are given, the better. The judges at these events will give the band a score on a scale of one to five, one being the superior score and five being more on the bad end of the scale.
Jose Fernandez, a freshman in the marching band says
“Being in the marching band is pretty fun, and you make new friends every day. It’s a good time, I would definitely recommend jointing our marching band.”
The school year has just begun, leaving nothing but time for Mr. Sobba and his marching stampede to preform and compete for the Garden City High School Buffaloes.
Brayden Southern is a junior in the Health Academy, you can contact him at southernb@student.gckschools.com.
Garden City High School 