Taking a “Roman Holiday” this year, the Warsaw Community High School Percussion Ensemble will be performing the music of Italian composer Ottorino Respighi. According to director Mickey Ratliff, he got the title from the Audrey Hepburn movie, but the music includes three pieces of Respighi’s “Roman trilogy”. Two movements come from Respighi’s “The Pines of Rome”. The third is from his “Roman Festivals”. Ratliff said the first movement is very fast and called “Villa Borghese”. “The movements are just to depict different settings from Italy, specifically Villa Borghese is a villa outside of Rome,” Ratliff said. “It’s going to be really fast, really exciting.” While Respighi uses harps, the keyboards in the percussion ensemble will play the harp parts. The second movement is “Gianocolo”. “I believe Gianocolo is a temple on a hilltop in honor of the god Janus,” Ratliff said. Janus is the god of beginnings and transitions, and is often depicted with two faces. “That will be the ballad, the soft, slow pretty section,” Ratliff said. “The Epiphany” is the section from “Roman Festival” the ensemble will play. Each movement from “Roman Festival” is meant to depict a different festival, Ratliff said, so it will be loud and exciting. This is not the first time the WCHS Percussion Ensemble has played this show. Back in 2003, Ratliff said, the percussion ensemble performed it, but he wanted to do it again. Enough time passed that Ratliff felt like the group wasn’t repeating themselves. He did change the title of the show for this group of students. “Another reason I chose the show is because it was always one of my favorites, so I always wanted to do it again but I wanted to avoid repeating ourselves,” he said. “I wanted to do it again because I just got my arrangement published.” With the publication of his arrangement, Ratliff is able to provide the music to his students that is all nice and neat and easy to read. He provided the students with copies of the music before Christmas break so they could be ready to attack it on the first day. “I think it bodes well for the type of season we’ll have,” he said. Senior Jordan Friddle said the music is fun, challenging and fast. “It’s all of the above through different points of the show,” Friddle said. “Fun. Fast. Very quick. So it should be very exciting.” Zoe Marshall, senior, said, “It’s a challenge, especially for me. But it’s fun. I’m excited. They’ve done it before, so we get to the class that gets to do it again.” Friddle said they haven’t gotten that far into all of the music to determine which parts he likes best of the music. However, he expects that it should be some fun stuff in it. Ratliff’s wife watches the Turner Classic Movies channel almost nightly, so when he was looking for a title for the program, “Roman Holiday” popped in his head. “I think it’s accurate to the music, too. The idea of a Roman holiday is very celebratory and festive, too,” Ratliff said. The percussion ensemble started rehearsing the music as soon as they got back to school from Christmas break. “It’s challenging,” Ratliff said. “Everything we do every year is challenging in one respect or another.” The music is classical, which the ensemble hasn’t done since it performed this program back in 2003. “We did a couple years of contemporary stuff, jazz, ethnic, Latin and rock last year with the music of Rush. Each year has its challenges,” Ratliff said.The ensemble’s first competition is Feb. 11 near Indianapolis, probably at Decatur Central. The location won’t be assigned definitely until closer to the performance date. On Feb. 18, the ensemble travels to Ossian to compete at the Norwell invitational. Warsaw gets to host its own invitational March 3 at approximately 4 p.m. in the Tiger Den. The Indiana Percussion Association Inc. will set the times and schedule. In prior years, Ratliff said, the Warsaw invitational featured 22 to 25 groups. “I hope there’s at least that many, but it would be nice if there’s more,” he said. “We have a great show and facilities. We have the most seating of any place we compete at. We can seat about 3,000 on one side. I’d really like to see more groups come, but 22 to 25 is a pretty big show.” Admission to the Warsaw contest will be about $5. “I feel like (the home invitational) is like playing a home game in sports. You have more people you know show up. It’s cool to play at home, more enjoyable,” Friddle said. “It’s a whole lot more relaxed,” Marshall said. State preliminary competition is March 17 at Avon High School, with state finals March 24 at Ben Davis High School. “Our expectations are every week to perform the best we are capable of and every week do better than we did before,” Ratliff said. “If we do the best we can, competition will take care of itself.” He said, “We maintain that philosophy that the best show we have is if we can do better than ourselves the last time we performed. You can’t really expect anything more than that.” A four-year ensemble member, Friddle said, “I’d like to get better and improve on the skills I have. I want to get to state and do better than we did last year.” Last year, he said, they placed third at state. “Definitely become more technically proficient,” Marshall said. “Play the bells better. Enjoy it and have fun. If we do well, that’s awesome, too.” “Music is good release,” Friddle said. “It’s relaxing. I get a lot of enjoyment out of playing music. I get enjoyment out of seeing how we put it all together and the learning experience.” “I’ve learned a lot,” said Marshall. “Being in percussion ensemble with percussionists, you have to keep up. I’ve learned to read music, which helps me with my saxophone, too.” “It’s exhilarating,” Friddle added.
