There have been a number of changes to the staff for the 2024-25 school year, including to the Fine Arts classes with Ana Hinojosa-Santi the new Director of Bands.
“This is my first year at Liberty but it’s my 24th year teaching,” Hinojosa-Santi said. “I think these kids are probably the best kids I’ve experienced from the start. I think the directors prior to me did a great job in developing this program, so these kids are really hard workers, they’re great, fantastic musicians. The parents are great, so it’s a great community itself. It’s been very welcoming towards me.”
Bass clarinet player, senior Medha Kristipati, believes Hinojosa-Santi’s arrival has helped the band improve.
“First, I think the new director is very sweet and we’re going to get a lot of stuff done,” Kristipati said. “Even by now, summer band, we already got a lot of stuff done and made so much progress, but we have so much more room for improvement and she’s making it all possible.”
For senior Max Dowd, a French horn player, the changes made to the way students learn pieces has made practices more effective.
“She’s been really concise and drives us to keep improving even though we sound good for where we are in the season,” Dowd said. “I’ve noticed a difference in the content of practice. We’ve been focused on getting it down, whereas last year we cleaned what we had and then added on and then cleaned. I’m really excited to continue the success we had last year outside of area.”
With such a drastic change of personnel in the program, band staff has been working to ease the transition.
“There have been a lot of small adjustments here and there,” Director of Guards Scott Mills said. “As a staff we’ve just been working really hard to make the adjustment as seamless as possible for the students and for ourselves, just making sure we’re all on the same page on how the organization is going to run.”
Hinojosa-Santi is striving for greater success than last marching season.
“I think these kids deserve us giving them a good product for marching season, so we’re going to see how far we go,” Hinajosa-Santi said. “Besides that, just continuing they’re musicianship and how many all-staters we get and developing the ensemble as far aw we can within the limits of the first year.”