NHS Marching Band's Winning Start to Their Successful Season
On September 22, 2018, Nutley High School’s Marching Band won first place in two competitions. The Marching Band went to Montville Township High School and Lenape Valley Regional High School and won with the scores of 79.350 and 78.250. These first two competitions have lead the Marching Band to a winning streak. The band has many members ranging from freshmen to seniors who all work together to string together high-end performances.
With all members, whose ages range, they have many different opinions and feelings about the recent wins. Gabby Mackiewicz, a junior at NHS, has been a part of the NHS Marching Band since her freshman year. She says they won because of the amount of effort put into their performances. For this year, the NHS Marching Band decided to go for a different style of performance. They focused on a genre they hadn't tackled before, “dystopia.” The NHS Marching Band wanted to go for something unusual. They tried out something new in hopes that it would work well for them, and it definitely did considering they’ve been winning.
The Marching Band may do extremely well in competition, but that does not mean they take practice time lightly. They are always working hard, always practicing. The Marching Band director, Vincent Vicchiariello, did not fail to mention the dedication that has been put into their practices. “We practice twice a week from 5pm until 8:30pm. Saturday morning we have practice too and sometimes students do things on their own,” Vicchiariello explained. To give a good performance both the students and teacher have to work with one another, and it is not light work. While they do practice for at least eight hours a week, the students often take it upon themselves to practice every day at home for an hour or more.
The NHS Marching Band has been vigorously working to get where they are and it’s not cheap. They invest much of their time and money to pull off those stunning, first place worthy performances. There are multiple parts to their performances. It is not simply instrument playing, they also have dancers, flag twirlers, and choreography. The music they perform is also a huge factor into how their performances go. They need to base the entire performance they are going to do around the songs. They put a lot of work and effort into finding songs, editing them, and just making it so that the band is able to use them. “We go out. We find the music. The arranger makes it into what we want and then we need to purchase the rights. The show cost about $1,500,” Mr. Vicchairiello said.
The NHS Marching Band is a force to be reckoned with. They’ve worked exceptionally hard to get where they are now and they will keep working hard to improve. They’re going to keep pushing themselves to better and better their abilities. The NHS Marching Band will continue to put all the effort they have been using, and even more effort than that to continue being the pride of the school.
