On August 23, 2012 the District 155 Steelband took the stage for the first time ever! Only meeting one time a week for two hours at a time, made for a daunting challenge. To add to that, there were only six rehearsals scheduled before the concert giving a total of 12 hours of rehearsal time. Most of the members had never played the instrument before, and to cap it all off they could not bring the instruments home to practice! Sound like a recipe for disaster??

Even with all of those factors working against us, the D155 Steelband put on a fantastic performance last night at the Percussion Showcase at Prairie Ridge High School! Along with putting together a complete tune in 12 hours on instruments that were new to them, most of them also learned the piece by rote (by ear) and performed by memory!

All I can say about this group is WOW!! These guys worked their butts off in order to make this happen. They learned new instruments that are completely different from anything else they had ever played before, and they learned the music in a different way than they were used to. It was really a lot of fun working with this group and I am looking forward to future groups. Special thanks have to go out to Mr. Blakewell for allowing the group to take part in the Percussion Showcase and organizing the event and to Jim Potts for giving us rehearsal space and a truck for moving the pans. Also thank you to all the members of the band:

Sean Santella – Lead
Peter Tozzi – Lead
Ethan Perbohner – Seconds
Sean “Jortz” Mignagaray – Seconds
Eric Stoddard – Cello
Alex Kluver – Bass
Chris Juliano – Drums

Obviously, without the hard work that these guys did, the performance would have gone much differently. Thanks guys!! Here’s the youtube video of their performance - http://youtu.be/YsfexTpTTVs