Sunset and Niwot Bands join forces for a scary good time

In addition to performing halftime shows at football games and marching in parades, the Niwot High School Marching Band is also largely about fostering camaraderie and building student leaders.

On Saturday, Oct. 26, the Sunset Middle School advanced band had the opportunity to march and perform with the Niwot High School Cougar Marching Band. The two programs joined forces to march in the annual Longmont Halloween parade down Main Street in the midst of lots of music, candy, and festivities.

The tradition of early integration of the Sunset Band students goes back at least two decades. The team-up "has been going on for as long as I've been here," said Wade Hendricks, NHS Director of Bands.

Hendricks has been with NHS since 2013, but knows that the tradition goes back further than that. "My hope," said Hendricks, "is that middle school students get excited about marching band, as it is unfamiliar to them, so it might be scary, and remove some of the barriers to continuing (band) at the next level."

Maddy Cort Hartley, Director of Bands at Sunset, agreed that middle school students truly get to see how much fun marching band is and the "great culture that the Niwot High School Marching Band has." And on a personal level, she also said how great it is as a director to see former Sunset students continuing their musicianship at Niwot.

Since students in middle school are not yet practiced in marching or memorizing music, they undergo special preparation for this parade. For several weeks, Sunset band students spend time in class learning the parade tune, "Ghostbusters." The week before the parade, students from NHS visit Sunset to work together on learning how to march. This ranges from marching fundamentals, keeping feet in time, when to raise their instrument to play, and learning how to bring energy through vocals and choreography during the drum cadence.

Maeve Simon, an eighth-grade trombone player at Sunset, said that her personal preparation has also included singing "Ghostbusters" and practicing a lot. After the parade, Simon came away with the feeling that marching band "is a lot more advanced." She said she is "excited to do band in high school" and thought the whole experience was a lot of fun, but was disappointed that more students from the Sunset band did not choose to participate.

One of the highlights from the Halloween parade was that each band section dressed in themed costumes. Each section tried to "out-costume" the next.

This year, the color guard dressed up as Tim Burton characters, the flutes and clarinets disguised themselves as "Red Dye 40 foods and beverages," alto saxophones displayed their cowboy attire, drumline imitated the drumline instructor's general aesthetic, mellophones sported what the "ultra rich" would wear in cartoons, trumpets celebrated characters from Super Mario, and the low brass dressed as various Pokemon characters. Every year, the instructional staff has attempted to theme their costumes based on the halftime show. This year's halftime show is "Movie Night," so the costumes reflected the image of a 1930s movie director.

This is not the last time Sunset and Niwot will join forces. While the high school marching band is a big change for middle school band members, they will get another taste of the future at the Dec. 12 band concert at the NHS auditorium where Sunset band students will also be invited to perform their concert program, and will perform with the high school band again.