'Jumping for Joy': Brockton High band plays its best when it matters most and wins it all
BROCKTON — The Brockton High School Wind Ensemble won first place at the WorldStrides Heritage Festival in Philadelphia last weekend, where the students, dressed in their bright red blazers, performed on stage at the city's Metropolitan Opera House.
Brockton's band director Kevin Kardel, who has directed the school's band program for the last three years, brought 49 students to Philadelphia on April 20. The following day, the ensemble performed three songs for a group of judges.
Brockton received a score of 96.7 out of 100 earning them first place. Plus, the students won the Outstanding Band Award, the Adjudication Award and were invited to the Gold Showcase next year located in either Nashville or San Francisco.
"They were jumping for joy that's for sure," Kardel said.
The Brockton band competed against roughly 10 schools from states like Pennsylvania, Vermont and New York, some schools brought multiple band ensembles that performed separately. Groups that received a score of 92 or higher were given awards for their superior performances.
"As the award ceremony goes on, the last thing that they gave out was the overall band award. And that's when we found out we had gotten first place out of all the bands that were there," Kardel said.
Performing on the big stage
On Friday, the students attended a personalized clinic with the director of Drexel University's concert band Patrick Bailey, who the band performed for in order to prepare and get advice ahead of the competition the next day. That's when Kardel said the mood changed.
"They went from being really excited on the bus on the way down to Friday morning, all of a sudden, the nerves crept in a little bit," he said. "They were really nervous about playing and making mistakes and everything."
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In front of the judges Saturday, using the last-minute suggestions from Bailey, the ensemble played "Symphonic Dance #2" by Clifton Williams, "Festivo" by Vaclav Nelhybel and "Nobles of the Mystic Shrine" by John Phillip Sousa.
"While we were standing there waiting for the judges to finish the previous group, I said to them, 'Have fun and just play,'" Kardel said. "They kind of relaxed once they hit that first note of the opening song."
At the award ceremony that night, the group found out they scored the highest ranks in the competition.
Seniors' final competition
The Brockton High wind ensemble hasn't competed out of state since 2018, when they participated in a festival in New York. Prior to that, the group competed annually in competitions located in Orlando, Toronto, Chicago and Washington D.C.
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The current class of seniors — 33 of the 50-student ensemble — were freshmen in the 2019-2020 school year. At the time, the group was planning to attend a festival in New York when the school shut down at the start of the pandemic. So, this year was the class's last, and first, opportunity to perform out of state.
The ensemble is an audition-only group of students from Kardel's two concert bands. They perform once a week after school throughout the year.
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Kardel said their performance on stage was "unbelievable."
"It was the best we had played all three songs the entire year," he said.
This article originally appeared on The Enterprise: Brockton High School Wind Ensemble gets first place at WorldStrides
