Written by Jett-le Tran Le and Angelina Prum.
The Malden High School Band has won 2nd place with a Score of 89/100. They performed on Friday, May 25th during the day at a competition at Six Flags. The band that won first place was Pembrook Windensolmal and the band that took third was Pembrook Concert Band. The competition brought together different high schools and middle schools to perform in a competitive setting.
Malden High School band director Erin Mazza-O’Brien says that “[they] have been practicing [their music] since the beginning on January.”
Songs that they performed that day was “Army of the Nile, which is a march, Novena rhapsody for bands, and an American Notebook.”
Challenges that the band faced were “instrumentation, [they] do not have a lot of instruments, [they] have a lot of the instruments and [they] do not have a good variety of different types of instruments.” Mazza says that “as a director [she] has to take people’s parts like a french horn part [they do not have that part] and [she] has to write it out and [she] has to give it to another instrument that [they] a lot of like a flutist,” because points can get deducted if not all parts are accounted for.
Mazza said that they are scored on “pitch, intonation, rhythm, articulation, and musicality,” similar to MICCA, the Massachusetts Instrumental and Choral Conductors Association competition, and “all of the categories add up to a hundred and [they] received an 89 out of the 100.”
Mazza says that the strengths the Malden High band’s has are “perseverance, [the band students] had to work really hard to get to the point where they are at right now.” She said that “[they] had a lot of new students this year, about 40 percent of the band was new, they were either freshmen or transfers.” In spite of those difficulties, she said that they “had a lot of perseverance to go push through and they had a lot of enthusiasm and their rhythm is really strong.”
Things that Mazza would like the band to improve on is “learning the music faster because learning it faster will make it so [they] can improve faster as well.”
MHS students were able to compete because of district funding for the band program. Mazza says that “no competition is free and without the districts help [they] would not be able to do music in the parks and Boston symphony hall.” She says that they “are all really bless to have the principal, the mayor, the superintendent to support [the band].”
Mazza says that she “has a strict policy not to celebrate until [they] get first place.” She says she “thinks that you should not celebrate until you can accomplish the most you can achieve.” She says that “in any competition [they] reflect on what happened, [she] congratulates her group because [they] worked really hard.” She says that she “knows that [they] can do better so [they] should have time to improve instead of celebrating.”
Mazza says that she “is really proud of [them] from where [they] started [they] did not start off as a second place band and [they] definitely improve a lot from the beginning.”
President-elect Renet Chan states that she “felt like the band did a lot better compared to last year”. Chan states that even with the shortage of money and people, the band was able to play composition together.
Chan states that the band works well together and the performance was “fun” for them. Chan is “very proud” of the band.
Overall the Malden High School band had to overcome many obstacles including budgeting and shortage of instruments but still managed to bring home a second place win for Malden High.
