The Pride of Portage Marching Band hopes to get its act in gear Saturday at the Indiana State School Music Association’s Scholastic A Class marching band final competition at Lawrence Central High School in Indianapolis.
The band will perform its 2015 show, “Mechanize,” with just over 100 members, said William Timmerman, band director. The marching formation creates the moving parts of a machine as the marchers create gears, pistons and belts, he said.
“In the winter, the staff gets together and tries to decide what the program will look like (for the next year),” said Timmerman. “Companies offer complete show packages. We kind of stumbled across this show (“Mechanize”) and we listened to it and thought it would be interesting and fan-friendly. We like playing at our football games and supporting our football program. We thought it would be fun for the fans.”
The Scholastic A Class puts similarly sized bands of 110 members or less together in competition, according to Timmerman, a change in the ISSMA competitive circuit made three years ago to even the playing field for smaller bands with fewer resources.
Prior to the change, smaller bands, many from larger schools, had an Open Class A Marching band designation. That meant bands like Portage, with only about 50 members at the time, might compete against bands with as many as 200 members and larger financial resources.
Also competing Saturday in the Scholastic A Class are LaPorte High School and Chesterton High School, among others.
LaPorte, last year’s Scholastic A champion, will perform, “Alice,” a show based on themes from the Tim Burton and Danny Elfman film “Alice in Wonderland,” said LaPorte’s Director of Music Mickey Stisher. Stisher directs the extra-curricular marching band and oversees the nearly 200 students in the school’s concert band program.
Chesterton took 5th place last year, behind Zionsville (2nd), Warren Central (3rd) and Warsaw (4th) high schools. This year the 95-member Trojan marching band will perform, “A Brave New World.”
The reclassification has helped, Timmerman said.
“All three years we qualified for the finals,” said Timmerman. “It has been really a good experience for us. Our band has grown enough where we almost hit the cut off. I’m hoping we will have more than 110 kids (next year) and may move to open into Open Class — we’d move up a class if our numbers continue to grow.”
Stisher said his marching band is extra-curricular, but the members are serious about what they do.
“About have our kid are involved in marching band. We have a large school with a smaller band — 94 kids isn’t exactly tiny — but in the Open Class A, so many of the schools have 200 members and they require the kids to march. We have more of a rounded approach and leave it as an extra-curricular,” said Stisher who added that many high school students have work schedules, family commitments and sports activities to consider. “My hat’s off to the kids in our group. They really commit to the organization and allowed us to build a successful program.”
Timmerman, now in his 28th year with Portage, said he’s had a lot of fun working with the band. After years as the assistant marching band director, he stepped into the director’s role about five or six years ago, he said.
“Over the years the program has gotten stronger and stronger and staff has gotten better,” said Timmerman. “We have a lot of good people at the middle and high school levels. We decided to invest more time in our marching program and make it as strong as the rest of our music program. Our goal was to bring our marching band up to par with our other ensembles. We are not exactly where we want to be but moving in the right direction.”
After Saturday’s competition, the Pride of Portage will redirect its focus to its concert band program.
“Essentially, the marching band is our fall sport. We do that, but our main focus is on our concert band program,” Timmerman said. “Our concert band program has grown to three full concert bands over the last three years. We have several different concert cycles. Last week was the fall concert and we are currently preparing for the holiday concerts and then will be preparing for the ISSMA concert band contests that happen in the spring. There’s constantly some kind of preparation going on in Portage.”
The Pride of Portage Marching Band, the Chesterton High School Trojan Guard Marching Band and the LaPorte High School Marching Band were among 13 in their division to receive the distinctive Gold rating earlier this month and advance to the finals. The champion in the Scholastic A competition will perform for exhibition on Nov. 7 at Lucas Oil Stadium, prior to the Open Class competition.
Nancy Coltun Webster is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
