UIL contest season is in full swing and for band that means a pre-UIL concert Tuesday in the auditorium at 5:30 p.m.

“It’s kind of our test run for two weeks from now which is our UIL official contest, and since mid-February we’ve been spending time in class and before and after school working with small groups and large groups that will compete with the four bands,” assistant band director Tyler Eldridge said. “The students have also had weekley online assignments where they have to summit and turn recordings of them playing different selections from the music so it’s been a lot of student individual focus on the music, then us coming together as during class period and working on it as a whole.”

Elbridge believes the opportunity for a practice run Tuesday will be immensely beneficial for the students who are competing in UIL April 16-18.

“It’s good to get some of the nerves out of it for the students in that environment, and we pretty much do it the same as they’ll do it when they compete at the actual contest,” Eldridge said. “The warm up times are the same, the performance times are the same, why have judges giving feedback and comments as to what we can improve upon for the next two weeks until we go to contest.”

Often considered the most challenging portion of the competition, all students will have to perform a sight reading piece at the pre-UIL concert Tuesday, and a new piece at the real competition later in April.

“There’s a sight reading portion where students look at music they’ve never played before and never seen before and they have eight minutes to learn it and try to perfect it then play it in front of judges,” Eldridge said. “[Tuesday] is just kind of a test run of going through that sequence and just getting students comfortable and confident in that process.”

Senior trombone player Joshua Lee has put in hours of practice alongside other band members to prepare.

“We’ve basically just been going through out pieces every day,” Lee said. “We spend a bunch of time on them each day, and we have been doing sectionals with our parts too.”

Lee has faith in the band’s abilities, and hopes the pre-UIL experience is going to prepare them for competition.

“I think we’ve spent a lot of time so it should be good,” Lee said.” We should just have to play the way we normally do and we will be fine.”
All band members on all levels have been putting in hours of individual and group practice to help with the flow of Tuesday’s performance, including French horn player Shelby Pybus.

“We’ve prepared mostly in class we’ve run through the whole program, and do sectionals before school,” Pybus said. “I think it’s coming together really well, especially considering the difficulty of the repertoire.”

While the music is complex, Pybus is happy with how the pieces sound so far.

“I’m a little bit concerned with one of our pieces by Persichetti,” Pybus said. “It’s a really unique piece but it’s really difficult, but overall it’s coming together very well.”