On Sept. 14, members of the marching band will compete at the Brownsburg Invitational, their first competition of the year. There, the band will showcase their performance for the second time after their debut at the football game last Friday. As it is every year, the composition, “The Queen Symphony” by Tolga Kashif, is new to the CHS marching band.
Chris Kreke, performing arts department chair and director of the marching band, said, “(The music) is a little more accessible, but it is still very much in the same vein as a lot of the music style that we did in the past few years. It is not a medley of Queen tunes. It is a symphony that was written based on some Queen melodies. It is not like you are going to hear a mashup of “We Will Rock You” and the greatest hits of Queen.”
Elizabeth Carter, senior and marching band member said she is looking forward to playing the piece at the upcoming competition. “This competition is a lot easier than some of the other ones because there isn’t a lot of pressure on us. It isn’t quite like the nationals or the regionals, so I feel like it is a little more relaxed, but barely, ” she said.
Carter says the band usually does well at this invitational, but she feels it doesn’t give them much feedback as she would like. She said, “By the (invitational), our directors are so experienced that they already know what we need to fix. (The invitational) is just a debut into (competitions). The scores help to compare with where we were last year (. . .) but to an extent, we get more feedback from bigger competitions.”
Kreke said the main goal of this invitational was not to gain anything tangible but to have the students become experienced with the competitive routine from start to finish. He said, “We don’t really talk about winning. (The competition) is all about the concept of excellence and how good we can be compared to ourselves rather than compared to anyone else.”