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ABOUT THE BAND

THE BAND

The Rancho-Maze Band is made up of advanced band students from Rancho San Justo and Marguerite Maze Middle Schools in Hollister, California.

The advanced band class meets for an hour every day in their respective schools and also meet as a combined group one Saturday per month. In addition, band members may audition for and play in the Jazz band and the Percussion Team (Drum Line). Participation in these groups requires many extra hours of practice and a dedication to the team.

The 2009-2010 Rancho-Maze Band and Color Guard

The 2009-2010 Rancho-Maze Jazz Band

The 2009-2010 Rancho-Maze Drum line

There are over 140 members in the 2008-2009 band and they will participate in numerous performances as well as 3 band reviews in the spring where they compete against bands from all over California.

The officials judge the Marching Band, the Concert band, the Jazz Band and the Drum Line. In addition to the musical competition, the tall flags, rifles and ID unit are judged as a unit called "Auxillary". The Drum Major is also judged individually.

A BIT ABOUT THE BAND

We wanted to take a moment and talk about some similarities between competition band (including Color Guard) and any other team sport. Actually, band is an athletic team sport. In fact, many schools allow P.E. credit for participation in marching band.

One difference between competition band and football or basketball is that in football or basketball (and others), the entire team does not get to play. There are first-string, second-string and sometimes third-string players. With competition band, everyone plays, everyone is on first string. As a first-string football player knows, it's very important to come to all the practice sessions if you want to start during the next game.

Band can also be compared to ice skating: The coach (band director) selects music that is challenging for the band and has audience appeal. The Color Guard director creates a visual show to go along with the music. The band then works on perfecting their routine so they can perform before judges who will dissect every move and subtract points for every mistake. As in ice skating, some of the judging is subjective so scores can vary from one competition venue to another.

The Rancho-Maze Band is unique because there are two schools involved. Each half of the band practices their music every day in class but they only get to practice as a complete unit (with Color Guard - on the street) during the Saturday practice sessions and on the Tuesday & Thursday sessions before competition. Think of an ice skating couple who have to practice by themselves for the majority of the time and only get to practice together a few hours a month.

Your children work very hard to perfect their routine and some of them have as many as 4 different routines to remember if they are in Color Guard, Percussion, Jazz Band and Concert. Please support them and come watch, We think you'll be impressed! We book larger charter busses so that we always have extra seats for parents to come along. Yes, it's a long day and you'll have some down time between events but it's rewarding to get involved and help your child and the band succeed. We think you'll find it's really worth the time. We hope to see you soon!

 OUR DIRECTOR