My elder daughter, a senior at George Walton Academy in Monroe, GA, is a member of the color guard on the GWA Marching Bulldog Band. This past weekend the band competed in the USSBA Southern States Championships in Chattanooga, TN, where they placed first in the Group VI Open competition with a score of 98.563, the highest score of the competition among all bands in all classifications. This is an amazing band that performs at a high level year after year, and I’m so proud to have gotten to know the directors, students, parents, and many others that make this band what it is.
This year’s show theme was “The Carmen Project.” The show mixed music from the opera “Carmen” with other Latin themes such as Ravel’s “Boléro” while interpreting the story of the opera. It was a grand and moving spectacle that just got better and better every time I watched it. My daughter played the role of Carmen, which of course meant she got to die in dramatic fashion at the end of the show.
Here is my recording of the winning USSBA performance. The actual show starts at the 3:30 mark; before that, you can see the band marching onto the field and doing their warm-up routine.
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