The high school’s concert band and symphonic band put together a pre-assessment concert with the Skyline Middle School band, and the Thomas Harrison Middle School band. Each band will be competing in the Virginia Band and Orchestra Directors Association District Concert Performance Assessment to showcase their work. Here they will be judged and rated on their performance.

Symphonic band conductor Daniel Upton has been conducting for the past five years at Harrisonburg High School. He had performed with the middle schools in previous years and brought them back this year.

“It’s not only a great experience for everyone to get some feedback, but it’s also a great opportunity for all the eighth through twelfth [grade] students to come together and really use it as a recruitment tool for the high school as well,” Upton said. “I think [the middle school students] get excited when they hear some of the music that we play and learn what high school is about.”

Juan Romero has been involved in the band program since eighth grade. Now a junior, he has continued to play the trumpet and is now a part of the high school symphonic band. With the assessment coming up, he is confident that they will perform well.

“I think we did pretty good… We’ll do better for assessment like always. We always get better… We are going to get superior like always,” Romero.

Senior Josh Jordon has been playing percussion since fourth grade and has been involved in the high school band program for all four years. Percussion is made up of a variety of different instruments, and often times performers play more than one. For the pre-assessment, he played snare drum, the xylophone and the vibraphone.
“I think it went pretty well, I think the second time we played through them better… I do like performing. Sometimes I get a little nervous before performing, but it goes away after I start playing,” Jordan said.