HVA looks forward to big year
Work has begun for Hardin Valley Academy Spirit of the Valley Band, as it starts its season with Band Camp.
Band members started camp Tuesday, July 12. The camp will continue through July 29, Alex Rector, HVA Band director said.
“Right now, we’re doing a lot of work on fundamentals marching and playing,” Rector said. “We also will start doing music for drill and competitions.”
Next week, band members will focus more on drills for competition and music for the show. Family and friends will have a chance to see what the students learned at a preview performance at noon, Friday, July 29, at HVA football stadium.
Their next time on the field will be HVA’s first football game Friday, Aug. 19, against West High School, and their first competition is slated for Sept. 17 at Etowah High School.
The band also will be involved in five other competitions this year, one of which HVA will host, he said. Band members also are preparing for the Grand Na-tional Championship, which is for high school marching bands. It is slated for Nov. 11 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indiana-polis, Ind.
“It’s going to be a big year for us, for sure,” Rector said. “This is the first time in eight or 10 years to be going to the nationals. We will be able to see how we will fare with bands that are there.”
This coming school year, the band will have a little more than 130 participants — breaking down to about 30 in each class, he said.
“We’re a little bigger than we were last year,” Rector said. Last year’s membership was 119.
“We had a relatively small senior class last year, and we have a larger freshman class, which has allowed us to grow this year,” he said.
“That’s definitely a good thing for us.”
“I love it,” Macey Collis, a freshman Color Guard member, said. “It’s so much fun.” Collis already has been in band for two years.
Alexis York, a senior on the Color Guard, said she started band when she was a freshman; however, she was on Winter Guard during her eighth-grade year.
Addison Fout, a freshman, said she had been in chorus most of her time in school but she wanted to make a change.
“I love music, so why not do band?” Fout asked.
Kendra Hampton, a freshman, said her sister was in Color Guard.
“She inspired me to join. She was competitive for three years,” Collis said.
This year’s show will be called “Mad Love.”
“It’s basically a love story between the Joker and Harle-quin characters in the comic books,” Rector said. “When we started talking about ideas, we wanted to pick something that would really motivate the kids and would be something they would enjoy, so we settled on the Joker character as being a big part of the story.
“From there, we started incorporating the love story idea with the Harlequin character.”
Rector said Ben Lee, a Bowling Green, Ky., professional arranger, specifically arranged the music for the band.
“We’re using some music from movies, some pop and some original music written for concert band,” he said.
