‘The Pride of Big Walnut’ returning to State Sunday in Dayton

The 128-member “Pride of Big Wal­nut” Golden Eagle March­ing Band qual­i­fied for Ohio Music Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion State March­ing Band Finals when they received an over­all Supe­rior rat­ing at the Maysville Parade of Bands on Sat­ur­day, Octo­ber 13.

Band direc­tor Craig Porter said this is the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year that the band has qual­i­fied for State; and he’s excited about mak­ing a return trip to State Finals.

“We’ve had a very good sea­son and I’m happy for the stu­dents that they earned the right to rep­re­sent the Big Wal­nut com­mu­nity at State again,” Porter said. “Qual­i­fy­ing for state com­pe­ti­tion is not an easy thing to do, but we’ve got a great staff that has worked hard to help the kids excel this year.”

Porter noted that the Big Wal­nut music depart­ment staff is much smaller than the staffs of bands sim­i­lar in size.

“Most bands that we com­pete against or that we share half­time with at foot­ball games have many more staff mem­bers work­ing with them than we do,” Porter said. “That means that our kids have to take a lot of own­er­ship of their com­pe­ti­tion show and find things to cor­rect that we may not see or hear as a staff.”

Music staff mem­bers include Assis­tant Band Direc­tor Lisa Hus­ton, Color Guard Instruc­tor Daisy Duhl and Per­cus­sion Instruc­tor Chris May.

Besides qual­i­fy­ing for State at the Maysville event, the band also earned Sec­ond Place in Class A competition.

Ear­lier in the sea­son the band com­peted at the Lick­ing Heights Pageant of Bands on Sep­tem­ber 8, earn­ing an Excel­lent rat­ing, Sec­ond Place in Class A com­pe­ti­tion and Best Over­all Per­cus­sion in Class A.

The band com­peted at the Tri-Valley Clas­sic on Octo­ber 20, but results were not avail­able at press time.

This year’s com­pe­ti­tion show theme is music from the Dis­ney musi­cal Tarzan, which was writ­ten by Phil Collins. Porter said the Tarzan theme opened up pos­si­bil­i­ties for spe­cial effects both musi­cally and visually.

“Our color guard com­pe­ti­tion uni­forms are very unique to our show theme as well as some of the props they are using”, said color guard instruc­tor Daisy Duhl. “We’ve had a great time com­ing up with fun ideas for the show.”

Porter said the music depart­ment also teamed up with the BWHS Art Depart­ment to cre­ate a unique prop for use in the show.

“We approached art teacher Melissa Max­son and her stu­dents for com­ing up with a Tarzan prop,” said assis­tant band direc­tor Lisa Hus­ton. “The art staff and stu­dents cre­ated an incred­i­ble back­drop for us. We are so appre­cia­tive of their help.”

“The Pride of Big Wal­nut” will com­pete at the OMEA State March­ing Band Finals at 6:30 p.m. on Sun­day, Octo­ber 28, at Day­ton Wel­come Stadium.

Posted by Gary Henery on Oct 24 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.