At The Alter

In an article in December, I mentioned the dust has settled on the 2022 high school marching band season. If it was settled by then, last year’s season must now be an Indiana Jones-style ruin, lost to time (aside from bracket contests on Instagram meme pages). I come bearing gifts for anyone dealing with off-season sickness: I’m talking about the 2022 high school marching band season again. 

Bartlett, H (2022). The Archbishop Alter Marching Knights in BOA Grand Nationals Semifinals performance. 

Undoubtedly stuck in pretty much everyones’ minds this past year was “Overjoyed,” the Class A Championship-winning production put on by Archbishop Alter (OH). The 36-member Alter band is one of the smallest bands to have ever performed in Grand Nationals Finals exhibition - so small that they’re the first band to have done so without being led by a drum major since at least 1997, if not earlier. No, really - I checked. I went back and watched 25 years of Grand Nationals Class A Champions. I just stopped finding YouTube rips of old BOA DVDs after Elizabethtown (KY) 1997. Conclusion: it’s been a while.

The Marching Knights became a BOA Grand Nationals mainstay starting in 2013 after narrowly missing semifinals the year previously. A long-time attendee, the band has maintained momentum, only missing class representative status by a small margin in 2015 and going through a short-lived slump in 2018 and 2019. The past decade has kept the band at a high standard of consistency - more than many of the top-billed names out there (but it’s not like competitive marching band is a competition…). 

Something is being done right, and it’s being done so right that this little band is now the defending Class A Champion. Curious about the trick, I sat down with senior Color Guard member Ava to see if I could figure it out. 

Responses have been edited for clarity.

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Your school has appeared in BOA Grand National semifinals plenty of times in the past. What’s your preparation like for that morning?

So our band is very small, and we weren't sure if we would make semifinals in general. Having our band announced last definitely brought a lot more mental preparation that we needed for the next morning. From the beginning, we were prepared to go all the way to the end, and we knew that that would entail a lot of hard work.

I’ve been there with the whole “being announced last” thing. It’s pretty freaky! How did it feel finding out you were the Class Champion? How did your friends react?

I was talking to a friend in percussion earlier in the season, and we agreed that we were confident in winning the General Effect caption. We weren't sure about Music or Visual since the other 1A bands are forces to be reckoned with in those captions, so it was a pleasant surprise to win Music. It was definitely a letdown not to win Visual from a guard standpoint, but the Beechwood guard was incredible and definitely deserved it! I was in denial that we won until we got back to the bus, and it hit me. When they announced us as the winners, I started sobbing. We were hugging each other, and I hugged/tackled one of my friends so hard we fell on the nasty floors. 

I love hearing that! It’s definitely been something in the works for a long time. Y’all deserved that win 100%! Run me through a typical band rehearsal. What do you think makes your learning process special? How does it set you apart from so many other groups?

Thank you so much! So we rehearse every weekday except Tuesday from 3:30-5:30. We start out with a full winds and guard stretch while percussion warms up. We then switch to a 20-30 minute sectional warm-up, where the winds mark time and run scales (this is according to my brother, who plays the saxophone). Percussion runs their scales and volume pitches. Guard occasionally runs our official warm-up, but later in the season, we just take what we need. When we go back to full ensemble, we start out with what needs the most work and work backward from there. Towards the end of the season, we would end rehearsals with a full run. I think our group is different from other groups in that nobody is ignored. Being such a small group, there is a level of intimacy (I hope that's not a bad word to describe it), so nobody is left out. I think our group is set apart from other groups because we are so successful despite not having a drum major. Since we don't have one, everyone's effort fully matters.

I really like that answer! I’m also glad you asked your brother. The winds definitely have a little different perspective from us guard members! Intimacy is a fantastic word to describe it. One of my favorite things about Alter is the fact that it really feels like every band member is a dedicated performer, all of the time. It makes the shows super entertaining to watch! What’s something you keep in mind when you’re performing in front of an audience?

So I also do theatre at Alter, and I heard one thing from our music director that really stuck with me. We don't know what everyone in the audience is going through. Someone in the audience might be battling an illness, or someone may have just found out about the passing of a loved one. As performers, it's our job to make them feel happier (even just a little bit) and/or distract them from what is happening. I always remember that we're here to brighten people's day, even just for 8 minutes. For some personal experience with this answer, last year, our show was the music of Chuck Mangione (a jazz musician). We met an older woman after one of our performances who told us that her mother's favorite artist was Chuck, and his music was her childhood. She was in tears and thanked us for helping her keep the memory of her mother alive. This year while we were at Grand Nationals, my grandfather passed away. My dad was really struggling with the loss because they were so close. He told us after that while we were performing in Finals exhibition, he couldn't remember the loss because all he saw was my brother and I so happy to be performing and the audience's response. 

Thanks for taking the time to chat with me! One more question - what’s one piece of advice you have for young future performers?

No problem at all! Thank you for the great questions! I would tell younger members to remember that band is a family. Regardless of who you are, music and performing brings people together. I would also give the advice to not be afraid to embarrass yourself. Everyone is in the same boat, and it feels amazing to put yourself out there, even if it feels stupid in the moment. 

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I’ve had some time to sit with Ava’s answers. Many of her experiences seem universal - the values of hard work and effort are far from scarce in the world of marching band. I don’t think I’m alone in having expected some sort of magical, pedagogically-unique answer: surely there must have been something that made this little band so different, so unparalleled against the Goliath-sized ensembles around them. But it seems that Archbishop Alter’s success follows the David and Goliath story much closer than most parallels drawn today. For anyone that didn’t grow up with it, the story goes like this: David, a young Israelite boy who’s just a mere shepherd, notices that his nation’s army isn’t doing too hot against the enemy Philistines. Knowing that he’s got God on his side, he walks up to the giant, Goliath, totally unarmored, and hits him with a slingshot. Goliath falls. Israel wins the battle. It’s the quintessential underdog story. 

There’s something phenomenally human, yet endlessly inspiring, about some little guy carrying a slingshot and taking out a giant with it. There’s something similarly inspiring, then, about one of the smallest bands in nearly 30 years taking a Class Champion title (as well as beating Marian Catholic, the current record holder for the most Grand National Champion titles ever, by one placement overall). My editor is always getting onto me for talking about who scored what “because the human aspect of the performance is what people latch on to.” However, despite the wealth of public disagreement surrounding BOA results, the numbers are the most objective way to describe just how well a band does during any given performance. The part I’m really latching onto about Ava’s answers is that the Archbishop Alter band does well without anything to make them superhuman. David has a slingshot and shepherd’s clothes. The Marching Knights have full runs at the end of rehearsal and a desire to make people happy. What got Alter the win wasn’t a crazy budget, flashy uniforms, or the biggest names in pageantry design - it was individual passion and devotion, a deep love for the product. It’s the cheapest thing money can’t buy. 

My takeaway from Ava and I’s conversation and having seen the show live is that weakness and strength are not two opposite ends of a spectrum. Rather, we derive our power from what makes us most vulnerable - it is the capacity for great emotion that creates performers capable of selling that emotion. Being a tiny band up against Goliaths is a privilege to show off individual responsibility and a fierce sense of unity. It’s like Ava says: everyone is in the same boat. Moving as one heart and mind is something that any band, from 30 to 300 members, can do. Archbishop Alter just happens to do it really, really well. 

Hattie Bartlett is an experienced marching arts content creator making her writing debut with GEM. As a former member of the color guard, she has traveled across the country covering events with WGI and Box5, as well as informally commentating via HornRank. Hattie is currently on staff at the University of Missouri as a field photographer and communications intern. She can be found on Twitter, Instagram, and Tiktok as @ilikeguard.