The Winter Percussion Ensemble is pictured rehearsing at Warsaw Community High School Friday. Photo by Jackie Gorski, Times-Union.
The Winter Percussion Ensemble is pictured rehearsing at Warsaw Community High School Friday. Photo by Jackie Gorski, Times-Union.
Warsaw Community High School bands will have two opportunities this week to showcase their talents.

The Percussion Ensemble, Jazz Band and soloists will perform in the Winter Showcase Concert at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Performing Arts Center. The concert is free.

The Jazz Band is going to play some standard swing tunes. There’s going to be two solos, and the Woodwind Ensemble will play “Adagio.”?Then the Winter Percussion Ensemble will play its “Eternal Nightmare” show, said Mark Ziegler, WCHS band director. The concert will showcase about 40 students in the different bands.

“It’s just a chance for them to showcase their talent and show the hard work that they’ve been putting in. A lot of the music has been hours of rehearsal. And they love performing and that’s the culmination of their event is the chance to perform for the parents and community and friends,” he said.

The second event this week is the state contest.

The Winter Percussion Ensemble will compete at state Saturday, Ziegler said. “We compete in the Indiana Percussion Association and we’re in the concert class A.”

There were 17 groups in the preliminary competition and the Winter Percussion Ensemble placed second.

“We’re really excited about that. We had a really strong show. Our show is called ‘Eternal Nightmare’ and it’s basically a different arrangement of music that was taken from horror movies. And so we have ‘The Exorcist’ and different songs like that were taken from horror movies. The opener of our show is ‘Cruel Summer,’ originally by Bananarama back in the ’80s. We put a really weird twist on it. We have ‘The Exorcist’ music and then we have ‘Night on Bald Mountain,’ Mussorgsky, so that’s the show music that we have,” he said.

For state, Ziegler said the 10-member ensemble is going to the Indiana State University Hulman Center, Terre Haute.

“We feel like we got a really strong shot at a state championship. We’ve had five of those. Warsaw Percussion Ensemble has had five of those in the past. The last one that we had was in 2013, so we’re hoping that this will be another banner we can hang on the wall,” he said. The ensemble did go to state last year and placed fifth.

The ensemble has gone to several invitationals, the first being Feb. 12. “We’ve had pretty much a show every weekend since then. We’ve gotten three first place and one fifth place,” he said, noting the ensemble is having a strong season.

“Warsaw Percussion, we’re known in the state for having a strong percussion program, so you know, we hope we can continue that legacy and get another championship this year,” he said.