Dreams can reflect a person’s moods, and waking up from a dream can put a person into an entirely different mood than what they were in before they fell asleep. Warsaw Community High School Marching Band will be taking their audiences to “Dreamland” this season. Setting the mood for the theme will be the music of composer Michael Markowski. According to band director Mickey Ratliff, the Marching Pride will be doing two pieces this year. The first is “Dreamland,” and the second is “Shadow Rituals,” both by Markowski. “He’s a young composer. He’s composed several pieces for other concert bands and he’s done some film work. He’s 26 or 27 years old. He’s young, especially with the amount of music he’s written,” Ratliff said. Assistant band director Emily Mikel first heard a performance of Markowski’s “Dreamland” piece at a clinic last year. She suggested to Ratliff that it would make for a good marching band piece. Ratliff listened to it and agreed. He then wondered if Markowski had any other music that would work for a marching band. He found several good pieces, but decided on “Shadow Rituals” because it would work for WCHS’s show. “It’s going to be, for the most part, a pretty up-tempo high-energy show,” Ratliff said. “It starts down and ends down, but inbetween it’s high energy, rhythmic and jazzy in some ways.” “Shadow Rituals” is pretty dark music and intriguing, he added. In some places, it even sounds tribal. While the theme and first piece is titled “Dreamland,” Ratliff said the band will be trying and hoping to present it in more of a surreal and less literal interpretation. “I’m wanting to get away from the obvious,” he said, referring to the idea of having students perform in their pajamas. “We’re trying, with the dark tone of it, to interpret it as more a trip through the surreal. I hope we’ll get that to come across.” The pieces go through so many different moods – five or six moods through the entire show – that they’re like a person having one dream that changes into another dream that moves into another dream and so on. “Musically, the pieces will be able to capture that so it’s up to us to develop the idea through movement and character and style,” he said. “It’s pretty tough,” he said of the difficulty level of the music. “Both pieces are concert band pieces. By and large, we’re playing the concert band version. We’ve made some changes here and there ... but not in taking the difficulty level down. We’re adding more drumline and percussion because that’s part of marching band. We haven’t done anything to make it easier.” To prepare for the upcoming marching band season, the WCHS Tigers had pre-band camp July 22-26. Last week was band camp, where they worked five full days, and this week they had three full days. There are more seniors this year in the band than last year, Ratliff said. About 30 are freshman, so at least half of the approximately 100 band members are freshmen and sophomores. The public will get its first glimpse of the band’s show this year Aug. 23 at the first WCHS home football game. Besides the home football games, the band will compete Sept. 14 at Goshen High School; Sept. 21, East Noble; Sept. 28, Penn; Oct. 5, Homestead; and Oct. 19, to be determined. The state preliminary competition is Oct. 12 at Homestead. Ratliff reported the Indiana State School Music Association has revamped the classification system this year so Warsaw will be in the Scholastic Class for large schools, what used to be Class A & B (schools with 1,100 or more students). If Warsaw wins Gold at the Oct. 12 competition at Homestead, it will qualify for the state finals Oct. 26 at Lawrence Central in Indianapolis. “Our goal, of course, is to make state finals and do well and finish near the top,” Ratliff said. With the new classification system, Ratliff said he wasn’t sure what other schools will be in the Scholastic Class with Warsaw or how it will work. Top-tier bands like Avon, Carmel and Goshen, who have been at the top of their class for many years, will be in the Open Class. “They’ll be able to compete in a class all by themselves,” Ratliff said. Based on that, he said he could only guess right now which schools will be in the class with WCHS, but he won’t know definitely for a couple of weeks. “The goal is to make state finals and do well in our class, but it will determine who’s in it. But I believe we have the potential to reach those goals,” he said. Three of the seniors in the band this year are excited about the music and show. “I am totally excited,” said Hannah McCarty, who plays the flute. “I’m more excited than I’ve been my whole high school career. I think it sounds really great. There’s some big potential here.” She said the music takes her through different moods, from being mellow and sleepy at the start to excited. Beth Koontz, also a flutist, said, “I think it’s different than we’ve done the past three years, and that’s good.” She said the last three years have been “foresty and night time,” but the music this year is different. “There are some aspects of it that are challenging, but not technically. The challenging part is putting the emotion behind it,” Koontz stated. Alto saxophonist Leanna Engle agreed with her classmates. “I’m really excited about it. It’s just something completely different. I’m blown away by the impact at the start of it and the impact it will have on the audience,” she said. Engle’s goal for the year is to get to a higher level than past years. McCarty said the past few years they missed going to semi-state by five-hundredths of a point, which has been frustrating. With the new classification system, she said it gives Warsaw a better chance at going farther.
