As the leaves begin to change and fall settles into Valley Stream, the district’s marching bands are getting ready to take the field.
The Valley Stream Central High School District will host its annual Marching Band Festival on Oct. 19, at 7 p.m., at Firemen’s Memorial Field on Albermarle Avenue, bringing students from Central, North and South high schools together for an evening of music and school spirit.
At Central, preparations have been underway for a couple of weeks. Students like senior Noeli Crespo have spent class time learning music, practicing formations and getting comfortable performing the show as a group.
Crespo joined the marching band in her sophomore year. She has played alto saxophone since fourth grade, and already had a love for music before she joined, but she said that marching band has given her a different experience.
“It’s a very different type of music than concert band, so it’s a cool experience,” Crespo said.
This year, Central’s performance will have a K-pop theme, with a show comprising three songs. The idea came from band director Doug Coleman, who heard “Soda Pop” and liked the song enough to build a larger performance around it. He searched for two other K-pop songs that fit the theme.
The work of preparing for the performance happens throughout the school day. The student musicians head outside when weather permits, and spend about 30 minutes working through their drills and songs.
For Coleman, preparing for the festival is part of a much larger process of helping students grow as musicians. He started teaching in Valley Stream in 1995, at North High School. After five years there, he became Central’s band director in 2000.
Coleman’s decision to pursue music education was influenced by his own junior high band director, who he said made a lasting impression on him. He initially considered studying engineering, but eventually decided that music education was something he could see himself doing for an entire career.
Over the years he has watched the Central marching band change considerably. The program once had about 155 students, but the coronavirus pandemic significantly impacted participation, as well as students’ musical development. They lost years of regular practice and instruction, and rebuilding has taken time. Students returned with different levels of experience, Coleman said, which made it necessary to refocus the program on steady improvement rather than trying to rush the process.
“You just got to do it with care, and you just adjust your teaching,” he said.
That patience has shaped the way Coleman views his students’ progress. Some begin the year with more experience than others, and some struggle along the way. For him, success means seeing every student improve by the end of the school year.
“By the time we get to June, everybody’s participating and doing the best they can,” Coleman said. “They’re at a completely different level than where they started.”
He said he is especially proud of being able to help students along the way. “I try not to leave anybody behind,” he said.
The annual festival gives students an opportunity to showcase that progress, and to connect with musicians from the other Valley Stream schools. The event was established as an alternative to the district’s previous participation in a marching band festival at Newsday. Those performances, Coleman explained, often kept students out late, sometimes until 11 or 11:30 p.m., which could be difficult for those who balanced band with advanced classes and other commitments.
Keeping the festival in Valley Stream has made it easier for families to attend and has encouraged more parents to stay and watch their children perform. It has also given students from the district’s high schools a chance to see what their peers have been working on and share an experience outside their individual school communities.
For Crespo, that experience is about more than preparing three songs. After years of playing the sax and several seasons of marching band, she has another opportunity to perform alongside her classmates and be part of something that brings the district together.
When the students take the field later this month, they’ll bring with them weeks of rehearsals and the progress they’ve made since the start of the school year.
The festival’s rain date is Oct. 26.
