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2017 BOA St. Louis


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Excited to see three Texas bands attending this year!

 

Anderson (Austin, TX)

Cypress Falls (Houston, TX)

Westwood (Austin, TX)

 

I bet all three could probably make finals. 

 

I looked at the previous score sheets and I found that:

Anderson got 5th at St. Louis in 2012, most notably beating Blue Springs and Union in GE.

Cypress Falls just made San Antonio finals this past year, which speaks for itself.

Westwood hasn't attended St. Louis before, but got 9th at Atlanta in 2015, and has beaten bands like Round Rock are area competition before.

 

Broken Arrow, Blue Springs, and Owasso are all attending this year's St Louis competition. Should be a good one!
 

 

 

 

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Cypress Falls will be an almost definite lock for finals. I know Westwood has beaten beaten some well known bands, but that is UIL vs. BOA and who knows how that will translate on the sheets. Either way, they should easily be top 14 and I would be shocked to see them out of finals. I don't know much about Anderson the past few years but if they have a year as good as 2012, another definite finalist

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1. Broken Arrow H.S., OK

2. Blue Springs H.S., MO

3. Owasso H.S., OK

4. Bellevue West H.S., NE

5. Cypress Falls H.S., TX

6. O'Fallon Township H.S., IL

7. Round Rock Westwood H.S., TX

8. Grain Valley H.S., MO

9. Fort Zumwalt North H.S., MO

10. Austin Anderson H.S., TX

11. Bixby H.S., OK

12. Jenks H.S., OK

13. Mustang H.S., OK

14. Bentonville H.S., AR

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  • 1 month later...

I'm from Anderson and I'm assuming our show this year will be better than 2012 (Seeing how that show was not the best) because of our improvements from there. Our overall placements over the years have been fluctuating a little, but I feel confident with this year with a huge freshman class. Just gotta stay hopeful and keep improving. I have a couple of friends who go to Westwood and they are exited for this competition as well.

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I'm from Anderson and I'm assuming our show this year will be better than 2012 (Seeing how that show was not the best) because of our improvements from there. Our overall placements over the years have been fluctuating a little, but I feel confident with this year with a huge freshman class. Just gotta stay hopeful and keep improving. I have a couple of friends who go to Westwood and they are exited for this competition as well.

That's great that Anderson is going to BOA St. Louis! There are some FANTASTIC bands in that line-up. A great number of them are regulars at Grand Nats. Enjoy!! #teamtexas

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I love that there's an annual thread for St. Louis now as well as actual discussion about it.  It didn't used to be that way....I remember some years there wasn't even a thread for it, there might've been someone who'd bring up the scores in a different thread or mention that a TX band or 2 was going, but no real discussion over it.  

Anyway, to make finals at the STL Super Regional you pretty much have to be at a level where you can make finals in the DFW regional (or really Conroe or Austin).  Oklahoma bands like Bixby, Mustang & Jenks are among the Top 10 strongest bands in their home state and usually place in the 7th-14th area of finals at STL.  Jenks got 9th at the DFW regional in 2015.  

I'd say a band like Jenks is similar in ability to a band like Westwood or Anderson, though Jenks may be slightly stronger.  Westwood has been either 12th or 13th at Austin for the past several years.  It'll be close for them.  Same for Anderson.



The quality of marching bands in Greater Tulsa is actually quite high compared to most of the US.  Broken Arrow, Owasso, Union, Bixby, and Jenks are all from Tulsa and all of them are capable of making finals at the Conroe, Austin or DFW regionals.  They'd probably hold their own at the UIL State marching contest as well.

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The quality of marching bands in Greater Tulsa is actually quite high compared to most of the US. Broken Arrow, Owasso, Union, Bixby, and Jenks are all from Tulsa and all of them are capable of making finals at the Conroe, Austin or DFW regionals. They'd probably hold their own at the UIL State marching contest as well.

You know, you're right about that. I hadn't realized that there were so many good bands from the Tulsa area other than Broken Arrow! It probably also explains why Bentonville Arkansas is a great band as well since Bentonville is less than 100 miles away from Tulsa. It's interesting how such a small area of the country breeds really great bands!

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Im not sure. A few years ago haltom and James martin made the top 10 at boa st Louis, with martin being 6th. Neither made a Texas regional finals that year.

 

Both the Texas regionals and STL have roughly 4-6 GN-tier bands that attend each year.  But the level of competition drops quicker and spreads wider at the larger STL regional.  I would say making Top 10 at STL is probably harder than making Top 10 in DFW, Conroe or Austin.  But my point was it's slightly harder to make finals (Top 10) in a Texas regional (esp DFW) than it is to make finals (Top 14) in STL.

 

;) 

 

EDIT:  And to be fair, Martin only missed finals in Denton by .10 in 2014.  And they were still 9th in Prelims at STL that year.  The competition level is very similar.

 

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You know, you're right about that. I hadn't realized that there were so many good bands from the Tulsa area other than Broken Arrow! It probably also explains why Bentonville Arkansas is a great band as well since Bentonville is less than 100 miles away from Tulsa. It's interesting how such a small area of the country breeds really great bands!

 

It's more the exposure to the competition at places like STL and Nats than it is about being close to Tulsa.  Tulsa also has money that OK City doesn't have (OKC doesn't have nearly the band culture Tulsa does).  Bentonville has money as well (home values and income levels are almost twice the Arkansas state average)

 

 

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It's more the exposure to the competition at places like STL and Nats than it is about being close to Tulsa.  Tulsa also has money that OK City doesn't have (OKC doesn't have nearly the band culture Tulsa does).  Bentonville has money as well (home values and income levels are almost twice the Arkansas state average)

 

 

 

Interesting that money comes up - I think it is over-rated. I say that by looking at the school my wife attended and did marching band in - Adair County, KY. Trust me, that is absolutely not a wealthy school district - it is a small, rural, low population county in southern Kentucky that has been an absolute first rate program for at least as long as I've paid attention to marching band (roughly 1982). For them it is about the program and making the best of what is available. What money can get you is flash. Substance comes from the program and buy-in from the students. 35+ years of being one of the best 3 or so small bands in the country speaks for itself, and it isn't tied to money.

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Interesting that money comes up - I think it is over-rated. I say that by looking at the school my wife attended and did marching band in - Adair County, KY. Trust me, that is absolutely not a wealthy school district - it is a small, rural, low population county in southern Kentucky that has been an absolute first rate program for at least as long as I've paid attention to marching band (roughly 1982). For them it is about the program and making the best of what is available. What money can get you is flash. Substance comes from the program and buy-in from the students. 35+ years of being one of the best 3 or so small bands in the country speaks for itself, and it isn't tied to money.

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Interesting that money comes up - I think it is over-rated. I say that by looking at the school my wife attended and did marching band in - Adair County, KY. Trust me, that is absolutely not a wealthy school district - it is a small, rural, low population county in southern Kentucky that has been an absolute first rate program for at least as long as I've paid attention to marching band (roughly 1982). For them it is about the program and making the best of what is available. What money can get you is flash. Substance comes from the program and buy-in from the students. 35+ years of being one of the best 3 or so small bands in the country speaks for itself, and it isn't tied to money.

. 30 years at a small school and now at The Woodlands you have a very different perspective than most of us!
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Interesting that Adair County comes up - http://www.txbands.com/forums/index.php?/topic/6717-4a-statearea-predictions/?p=94185

 

The issue of money is complicated. Round up the list of 2016 state marching competitors and look at the percentage of students on free and reduced lunch and compare it to the state average (State average I think is 55 or 58%). I don't have the data on hand (though someone on the yellowboard crunched the data last November) but the average percentage of the nearly 40 bands was something like 40% while the percentage for the 10 bands that made finals was under 25%. And it's like that every year. Money clearly matters to some measurable extent.

 

Now obviously it's not the money that "makes you good". $50,000 in props don't really mean much in the grand scheme of things. It's "flash", as you put it. I mean look at the Japanese. Their best bands don't have nearly a quarter the budget that the best Texas bands do, yet they run circles around our best bands. However, even when analyzing their best and worst bands, it's still the wealthy private schools that rise to the top of their own competitions while the small rural village schools are still getting bronze awards (3rd divisions) and staying home for Nats.

 

I watched an inner city Texas band (90+% free/reduced lunch, 90+% hispanic ethnicity) rehearse one time and the rehearsals were dead quiet, zero chatter, and the director on the podium is leading with bubbly passion and the students are buying into it...the kids were much more focused in rehearsal than my High School band ever was...And the band played superbly...One of their ensembles had even been invited to Midwest in recent years. Yet we had been to the state marching contest and Honor Band finals several times and this band hasn't been in decades. Why? Because we had stronger elementary music programs, access to early childhood developmental tools (migrant workers aren't enrolling their young children in piano lessons when it's a struggle to even eat for example), consistent access to private lessons starting at the middle school level, access to better equipment...among many other things. We worked hard....and that's why we were successful. But a band like this inner city band needed to work even harder to make up for the lifelong shortcomings their socioeconomic situation placed them in.

 

As good as Adair County is, they're only as good as they can be with the resources and culture that they have. Adair County is an example of a band that I would say is pushing hard work to its "cultural maximum"....meaning the Japanese still work harder, but it would be unrealistic to expect the kids at Adair County to work as hard as the Japanese. There isn't a band in all of Texas with their similar socioeconomic situation that could compete with them....that "works as hard" as they do. You'll never see them winning Grand Nationals, but I mean that in the same way you'll never see a 1A HS Football team beat the UT starting lineup, even if that 1A school decided to work harder and train harder than UT. Every band has a cultural ceiling....that ceiling is higher than their community might often think it is, but it still has a limit. Money might be overrated...but it does matter, and quite a bit.

 

 

Wow that was really good. I 100 percent agree with you.

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Interesting that Adair County comes up - http://www.txbands.com/forums/index.php?/topic/6717-4a-statearea-predictions/?p=94185

 

The issue of money is complicated. Round up the list of 2016 state marching competitors and look at the percentage of students on free and reduced lunch and compare it to the state average (State average I think is 55 or 58%). I don't have the data on hand (though someone on the yellowboard crunched the data last November) but the average percentage of the nearly 40 bands was something like 40% while the percentage for the 10 bands that made finals was under 25%. And it's like that every year. Money clearly matters to some measurable extent.

 

Now obviously it's not the money that "makes you good". $50,000 in props don't really mean much in the grand scheme of things. It's "flash", as you put it. I mean look at the Japanese. Their best bands don't have nearly a quarter the budget that the best Texas bands do, yet they run circles around our best bands. However, even when analyzing their best and worst bands, it's still the wealthy private schools that rise to the top of their own competitions while the small rural village schools are still getting bronze awards (3rd divisions) and staying home for Nats.

 

I watched an inner city Texas band (90+% free/reduced lunch, 90+% hispanic ethnicity) rehearse one time and the rehearsals were dead quiet, zero chatter, and the director on the podium is leading with bubbly passion and the students are buying into it...the kids were much more focused in rehearsal than my High School band ever was...And the band played superbly...One of their ensembles had even been invited to Midwest in recent years. Yet we had been to the state marching contest and Honor Band finals several times and this band hasn't been in decades. Why? Because we had stronger elementary music programs, access to early childhood developmental tools (migrant workers aren't enrolling their young children in piano lessons when it's a struggle to even eat for example), consistent access to private lessons starting at the middle school level, access to better equipment...among many other things. We worked hard....and that's why we were successful. But a band like this inner city band needed to work even harder to make up for the lifelong shortcomings their socioeconomic situation placed them in.

 

As good as Adair County is, they're only as good as they can be with the resources and culture that they have. Adair County is an example of a band that I would say is pushing hard work to its "cultural maximum"....meaning the Japanese still work harder, but it would be unrealistic to expect the kids at Adair County to work as hard as the Japanese. There isn't a band in all of Texas with their similar socioeconomic situation that could compete with them....that "works as hard" as they do. You'll never see them winning Grand Nationals, but I mean that in the same way you'll never see a 1A HS Football team beat the UT starting lineup, even if that 1A school decided to work harder and train harder than UT. Every band has a cultural ceiling....that ceiling is higher than their community might often think it is, but it still has a limit. Money might be overrated...but it does matter, and quite a bit.

Fabulously interesting perspective! Thank you. You have given me a lot to think about. It reminds me of that old saying, "money can't buy you happiness, but it sure helps!"
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Interesting that Adair County comes up - http://www.txbands.com/forums/index.php?/topic/6717-4a-statearea-predictions/?p=94185

 

The issue of money is complicated.  Round up the list of 2016 state marching competitors and look at the percentage of students on free and reduced lunch and compare it to the state average (State average I think is 55 or 58%).  I don't have the data on hand (though someone on the yellowboard crunched the data last November) but the average percentage of the nearly 40 bands was something like 40% while the percentage for the 10 bands that made finals was under 25%.  And it's like that every year.  Money clearly matters to some measurable extent.

 

Now obviously it's not the money that "makes you good".  $50,000 in props don't really mean much in the grand scheme of things. It's "flash", as you put it.  I mean look at the Japanese.  Their best bands don't have nearly a quarter the budget that the best Texas bands do, yet they run circles around our best bands.  However, even when analyzing their best and worst bands, it's still the wealthy private schools that rise to the top of their own competitions while the small rural village schools are still getting bronze awards (3rd divisions) and staying home for Nats.

 

I watched an inner city Texas band (90+% free/reduced lunch, 90+% hispanic ethnicity) rehearse one time and the rehearsals were dead quiet, zero chatter, and the director on the podium is leading with bubbly passion and the students are buying into it...the kids were much more focused in rehearsal than my High School band ever was...And the band played superbly...One of their ensembles had even been invited to Midwest in recent years.  Yet we had been to the state marching contest and Honor Band finals several times and this band hasn't been in decades.  Why? Because we had stronger elementary music programs, access to early childhood developmental tools (migrant workers aren't enrolling their young children in piano lessons when it's a struggle to even eat for example), consistent access to private lessons starting at the middle school level, access to better equipment...among many other things.  We worked hard....and that's why we were successful.  But a band like this inner city band needed to work even harder to make up for the lifelong shortcomings their socioeconomic situation placed them in.

 

As good as Adair County is, they're only as good as they can be with the resources and culture that they have.  Adair County is an example of a band that I would say is pushing hard work to its "cultural maximum"....meaning the Japanese still work harder, but it would be unrealistic to expect the kids at Adair County to work as hard as the Japanese.  There isn't a band in all of Texas with their similar socioeconomic situation that could compete with them....that "works as hard" as they do.  You'll never see them winning Grand Nationals, but I mean that in the same way you'll never see a 1A HS Football team beat the UT starting lineup, even if that 1A school decided to work harder and train harder than UT. Every band has a cultural ceiling....that ceiling is higher than their community might often think it is, but it still has a limit.  Money might be overrated...but it does matter, and quite a bit.

 

Thank you for this response - I was hoping for something like this when I wrote my original comment (you exceeded my hopes - I find your comment to be outstanding). These things have so many moving parts that focusing on one or two things really misses the mark. My intent with the overrated comment was to bring to the front that money isn't a magic bullet. If it was, I think we would be talking about some other schools (I'll pick on DFW since I lived there for 9 years, but there are other areas of course) such as Southlake Carroll and/or Plano West or a class A example - Indian Hill, OH (I grew up in the Cincinnati area, so I can pick on them too :)). I think that one very significant area that money does make a difference (and this could be tied to your inner-city example) is show design. Hiring high level designers can get expensive, and without a high level design you have a definite ceiling in your program.

 

Speaking to The Woodlands (and don't forget we do split it with College Park), being part of the Conroe ISD spreads some of that benefit to the other schools nearby. There is a bigger mix here than people may realize, but with some enclaves of extreme wealth sprinkled throughout. I think one advantage to the area is availability of donations (individual and corporate) - it does seem that when the band has a need, and they publicize it, it tends to be attended to relatively quickly. That is most certainly a benefit of wealth in the area as well as a connection with the community.

 

I like your linked comment about Adair County and Columbia. I've been there many times and the overall description is right on. It still amazes me what they have achieved in relative anonymity, since not too many people pay attention to the class A bands. I was also pleased last year with Williamstown, KY finishing 2nd in class A. I went to the "big" county school that surrounds Williamstown, and they have had a very nice small school program for a long time. I recall when I lived in the region, K-12 was in 1 building, and I think the K-12 enrollment was something like 300. I doubt that it is much bigger now.

 

I also very much agree with your point about small schools competing at the very top levels - they really can't for many reasons (GE being a big one of those reasons). But even with that, there are plenty of AA, AAA, and AAAA bands that can't compete with them either even with the resources that may be available to them.

 

I don't have any knowledge regarding bands in Japan, but I'll take an opportunity to investigate as it sounds interesting. I've been fortunate enough to travel to Asia a handful of times for business (mainly China), and the cultural differences are quite dramatic, as you indicate. I tell people that I hate traveling, but I love visiting. In other words, 14 hour+ plane rides suck (yes, in economy), but meeting new people and being exposed to their culture is a great thing.

 

I love the dynamics of big bands, but I also love watching the small bands. For those that haven't watched them, you really should take a look, especially at GN semi-finals. The 4 class A bands that perform there (usually very early in the morning of course - I got up to watch them last year) are terrific programs, and they put on really good shows (think about how San Antonio reacted to St. James School's exhibition last year - they were very enjoyable to watch). The band that gets to perform at the end of finals from class A has really earned something, and they've had an exceedingly long day!

 

Again, thank you for your wonderful and thoughtful response.

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I don't have any knowledge regarding bands in Japan, but I'll take an opportunity to investigate as it sounds interesting. I've been fortunate enough to travel to Asia a handful of times for business (mainly China), and the cultural differences are quite dramatic, as you indicate. I tell people that I hate traveling, but I love visiting. In other words, 14 hour+ plane rides suck (yes, in economy), but meeting new people and being exposed to their culture is a great thing.

 

 

Anyone who knows me even a little knows that I'll never hesitate to impart the fruits of my recent love affair with the school band culture from the Land of the Rising Sun to anyone willing to put up with it, haha :lol: . 

 

I first learned the bands over there were amazing back in probably 2004 or 2005.  They've been amazing since the 1950s but they weren't in the broad American band director eye until the 80s (the first Japanese band was invited to Midwest in 1987....Sixteen other Japanese bands have been invited since then).  Widespread knowledge of their virtuosity wasn't widely known by the public until the Age of Youtube.  

 

I tried digging into the scene back in 2008 but it was a tough one to crack into.  The language barrier is a huge obstacle that I've slowly been overcoming. But since 2012 there's been an upcropping of interest in the English speaking world, mostly on the West Coast from people who are following the recent exploits of Kyoto Tachibana SHS, who they saw march in the 2012 Tournament of Roses and who are returning again for the upcoming one.  I'm not sure what style you could say this band marches, but it blends elements of stage bands, Californian parade bands and millicorps.  In any case this video has accumulated over 25 million Facebook views in just the past week and has been shared almost 350,000 times.

 

Other bands (concert and marching) to look out for:

 

Seika Girls School (They actually released a Christmas album in Japan that sold 20,000 copies...reaching number one on their classical charts.....a high school band)

Saitama Sakae (Really strong HS wind orchestra from Northern Tokyo. They came to Midwest in 2014)

Inagakuen (Another very good wind orchestra.)

Osaka Toin (Like Seika, has both a strong wind orchestra and strong marching band).  

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Anyone who knows me even a little knows that I'll never hesitate to impart the fruits of my recent love affair with the school band culture from the Land of the Rising Sun to anyone willing to put up with it, haha :lol: .

 

I first learned the bands over there were amazing back in probably 2004 or 2005. They've been amazing since the 1950s but they weren't in the broad American band director eye until the 80s (the first Japanese band was invited to Midwest in 1987....Sixteen other Japanese bands have been invited since then). Widespread knowledge of their virtuosity wasn't widely known by the public until the Age of Youtube.

 

I tried digging into the scene back in 2008 but it was a tough one to crack into. The language barrier is a huge obstacle that I've slowly been overcoming. But since 2012 there's been an upcropping of interest in the English speaking world, mostly on the West Coast from people who are following the recent exploits of Kyoto Tachibana SHS, who they saw march in the 2012 Tournament of Roses and who are returning again for the upcoming one. I'm not sure what style you could say this band marches, but it blends elements of stage bands, Californian parade bands and millicorps. In any case this video has accumulated over 25 million Facebook views in just the past week and has been shared almost 350,000 times.

 

Other bands (concert and marching) to look out for:

 

Seika Girls School (They actually released a Christmas album in Japan that sold 20,000 copies...reaching number one on their classical charts.....a high school band)

Saitama Sakae (Really strong HS wind orchestra from Northern Tokyo. They came to Midwest in 2014)

Inagakuen (Another very good wind orchestra.)

Osaka Toin (Like Seika, has both a strong wind orchestra and strong marching band).

Okay, so when they have the first BOA JAPAN, who's going with me??!

 

Wait....I guess that would be BOJ.:D

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  • 2 weeks later...

 

 

Anyone who knows me even a little knows that I'll never hesitate to impart the fruits of my recent love affair with the school band culture from the Land of the Rising Sun to anyone willing to put up with it, haha :lol: . 

 

I first learned the bands over there were amazing back in probably 2004 or 2005.  They've been amazing since the 1950s but they weren't in the broad American band director eye until the 80s (the first Japanese band was invited to Midwest in 1987....Sixteen other Japanese bands have been invited since then).  Widespread knowledge of their virtuosity wasn't widely known by the public until the Age of Youtube.  

 

I tried digging into the scene back in 2008 but it was a tough one to crack into.  The language barrier is a huge obstacle that I've slowly been overcoming. But since 2012 there's been an upcropping of interest in the English speaking world, mostly on the West Coast from people who are following the recent exploits of Kyoto Tachibana SHS, who they saw march in the 2012 Tournament of Roses and who are returning again for the upcoming one.  I'm not sure what style you could say this band marches, but it blends elements of stage bands, Californian parade bands and millicorps.  In any case this video has accumulated over 25 million Facebook views in just the past week and has been shared almost 350,000 times.

 

Other bands (concert and marching) to look out for:

 

Seika Girls School (They actually released a Christmas album in Japan that sold 20,000 copies...reaching number one on their classical charts.....a high school band)

Saitama Sakae (Really strong HS wind orchestra from Northern Tokyo. They came to Midwest in 2014)

Inagakuen (Another very good wind orchestra.)

Osaka Toin (Like Seika, has both a strong wind orchestra and strong marching band).  

 

Huh. I had no idea that Japanese bands went this deep. They've always been interesting to me when I watch old Midwest recordings, but had never bothered to look into it. Neat!

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