Hardest music?

[snares]

In your opinion, who plays the hardest music? To me, it's usually one of the Lewisville sister schools (Hebron and Marcus), but cedar sometimes has some runs same with woodlands and all of those southern bands.

[Nny14]

I think Leander is up there now with some real technically difficult stuff, espeically this year. But the real question is which band moves the most while playing that stuff? In that regard is why I think Hebron and Marcus are most renown for their sound. Most bands can play runs pretty good standing still, but the best do it on the move.

[Statebound]

I suppose that this topic is in the eye of the beholder.  I have been watching Marcus for nearly 10 years and I have never considered their music to be particularly difficult.  Their musical selection is typically beautiful and emotional and played with unmatched precision. They then combine that with a stunning prop and visual component to create a nearly unbeatable package.  The Sabre Dance closer from last year's show was really interesting and raised the bar for them.

 

CTJ and Hebron are the first two that come to mind for me because they both normally combine high technical content with pacing.  It is probably not a coincidence that they both had huge tears in the first two minutes of their state finals runs last year and finished 2nd and 3rd behind Marcus.  I just think that it's really hard to push as hard as those two push and play perfectly.  CTJ brought home the trophy from BOASA last year so it can obviously be done   

 

I would also put The Woodlands, LD Bell, and Coppell on the same shelf.  TW's Grand Nats championship show from two years ago was hard, quick, and visually insane.

[takigan]

There's only one HS show that comes to mind when I hear "difficult": Tarpon Springs (FL) 2010

9:09 - 9:40



Now, as for a Texas School that regularly plays the most difficult music?  Hard to say.  Every school has that show where they go all out and play some of the hardest stuff out there, and it usually comes up somewhat unpolished but still very impressive.  Other schools consistently play 20th century masterworks, which are widely known for being quite challenging, and they don't water it down. You have to have at least a few kids/section leaders in every section that are well taught (All-Area/State level) and have the necessary skills to pick this music up quickly and lead by example to help the rest of the band get to their level. One school that instantly comes to mind that does this is Cedar Park.  Coppell is another.  The Clear Creek schools I've noticed have a tendency to do this as well.

There's a limited gamut of composers that even write at the level of "stupid hard" but they include Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Hindemith, Persichetti, Bernstein, Gorb.   The orchestral suites from these composers were written to the maximum abilities of professional groups...if your winds are reading verbatim rips from the string parts from these composers, that's about as hard as it gets.

[alamodad]

There are many that play "Hard Music" - but when you look at the music and combine it with an insane drill you find the truly best bands - I think we saw last year that CTJ had both of those and pulled it off very well with a regional and super regional win along with a UIL medal

 

I think there will be many attempting to do the same this year - Leander, Woodlands and Bell come to mind as ones that many try to do the same and it should be a great year