Carlos Vazquez the band teacher at Iselin Middle School, picks music for band concerts a year before.
For last year’s winter band concert at JFK High School, they played Old Music Winter, Christmas Proclamation, Christmas Holiday March, and African Bell Carol. In last year’s spring concert, they played Thingamachine, Ghost in a Machine, Cog in a Machine, Iron Man, Applause, Machine Age, and Twittering Machine.
For this year’s winter concert, Vazquez plans to include songs such as Holiday March, Secret Agent Sugar Plum, and Santa’s Toy March. This year, he plans the winter concert to be taking place on December 17 at JFK High School. He will announce this year’s spring concert songs after the winter concert.
Vazquez, the IMS band teacher, picks his winter band music a few days ahead, before giving it to students. He does it differently for the spring band concert.
“For the spring concert I actually start picking the music the spring before I pick the music for it about a year ahead of time,” Vazquez said.
Band students also enjoy the music choices. Mahek thinks that the band’s music is really good, especially Holiday March and Secret Agent Sugar Plum.
“I feel good about the music choices because they have a very nice melody and they go well with the Christmas theme,” said Mahek Patel, a 7th-grade band student who has an instrumental band currently.
Vazquez chooses easy songs for the winter concert and harder songs for the spring concert. Winter concerts get easier music, due to the limited amount of time. On the other hand, spring concerts have harder music due to the longer time period to practice the music. This year, schedules have changed, and they now have less time to practice music as a whole group, causing Vazquez to choose easier songs, according to him.
Vazquez picks them depending on certain themes for the concert or how good they sound.
“They are either super entertaining and awesome to listen to. They can be a part of a theme that kind of adds to the vibe a little bit and I just choose music that sounds really good and music I think you guys would enjoy,” Vazquez said. “I think students are doing great actually, they are sounding good really fast, and since these are easy pieces our goal is to make them sound really really good. We are slowly getting there but it is happening.”
Most students agree with Vazquez.
“I think the clarinet fits the music because it’s the main focus for Holiday March and has like a melody in Sugar Fairy,” Mahek Patel stated satisfyingly.
Not everybody can get the part they want in a song. Sometimes, there are cases where some band students only have a few of the same lines and notes all over again for the entire song.
“I try to keep all the instruments in a band in my mind. But I can’t obviously make everyone happy, so we try our best to get everybody something to kind of like bite down on and something exciting to play,” Vazquez said.
