The marching band will compete in the Area meet this Saturday at the Mesquite Memorial Stadium at 11:45 a.m. After earning all ones from the Region 2 competition last Saturday at the Denton ISD stadium, the band advances to Area for the 31st consecutive year. The band will perform their highly-praised 2023 marching show ‘Constellations.’
“Everything about the show just works together,” band director Alicia DeSoto said. “The cohesiveness of the marching with the music and the design is really strong.”
The directors started planning this performance last summer when they chose the music and theme for the show which matched the music. After choosing the theme, they reached out to their teams of designers for choreography, props and color guard flag designs. Per UIL rules, the directors could not start teaching the routine to the students until Aug. 1, during summer band practices.
“At first I was like ‘There’s no way we’re going to do that,’” flute squad leader Jayla Cheaten said. “The directors said the music was going to be very loud and in-your-face, and when we listened to the music for the first time it just sounded like everybody was doing a bunch of runs of 16th notes. There was a lot of self-practicing.”
The show has a galactic theme, which tells a story of the stars and their alignment to each other. The band first performed this routine in front of an audience on Friday, Sept. 22 during the halftime show of the Flower Mound football game.
“[The show] is just really fun to conduct,” head drum major Curtuss Mims said. “I love listening to all their music as they’re doing their thing out on the field. It’s awesome being in the front and getting to hear the music.”
The band currently practices the show four times a week: after school on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, typically from 4:15 to 6:30 p.m.
“They’ve just made so much progress this year,” DeSoto said. “We’ve been able to elevate the way they look visually more than we thought we would, which has been really exciting.”
