From Hollywood to Hawks; Marching band plays movie music hits

From the big screen to the Hawk’s football field, the marching band is bringing the movies to their halftime performance. Although many people only come for the varsity game, they will definitely want to stay for the halftime show put on by the North Harford Marching band.
The theme of this year’s pieces is “Night at the Movies”. The performance is broken up into three different movements; the first is a space- themed, so it will include music from Star Wars and Star Trek; the second movement is composed of pieces from animated movies like Moana, and the third movement is made up of music found in action and adventure movies like Jurassic Park and Indiana Jones.
   According to the director, Mr. John Wojokowski, the students in the band have been preparing all the music and memorizing all the steps to make sure the show is as close to perfect as they can get. They have been organizing and practicing at Band Camp since the beginning of August, and have also been rehearsing after school. It is “…lots of work!” and “in a nutshell it is a lot of repetition, so we learn things in segments and chunks,” states Wojokowski, the band teacher. The band students come out towards the end of the summer and get straight to work to get ready for the upcoming season.
Wojokowski is not the only one in charge of helping the students learn the music and the footwork.  There are also two Drum Majors that conduct the band on the field. Seniors Nick Danielczyk and Lynne Thomas are co- drum majors, and both have a very big part in the well-oiled musical machine.

Thomas shared, “It is a large responsibility because you need to know the tempos for all the pieces and you need to make sure that you are able to conduct in a way so the band will be able to follow you.” While this does seem like a difficult job, the load is not only on Lynne’s shoulders; the two have a system where Danielczyk will conduct the first movement and then Thomas will then conduct the second movement, and then they will discuss who will be running the last piece.
Between the all the awesome music from movies and shows that everyone loves and the fact that the band has put so much effort into getting ready, the halftime performance will be out of this world.

Genevieve Siegmund