behind the scenes in marching band

By Jacob Tierney, 2025

Published 10/5/22

Fall has fallen. And that means something most of you don’t think about. Marching band. Most of the student population has only ever seen the band performing their show during halftime at the home football games. But to the band, those events are secondary, the more important ones being competitions. Marching band competitions, held on Saturdays, often include upwards of 10 different school bands, competing in different classes based on size. The Cheshire High School Marching Ram Band’s (CHSMRB) season has begun with an explosive start. Starting in band camp, a period of two weeks before school (where the band practices 8 hours a day, 40 a week), the band learned, practiced, produced and completed the entirety of their show. This being compared to last year, where the 2021 CHSMRB had finalized a little over half of their entire show by the end of band camp.

Now, unbeknownst to most, marching band shows have plots, or rather short stories that tell deeper and deeper stories, through the more you watch and comprehend the show. This year, the show (labeled Last Train Home) follows a girl in the early 20th century living on a small country farm. As she grows, she becomes discontent with her world, and feels an attraction towards the shiny, bustling, skyscraping city that is New York. She eventually leaves everything she knows behind and takes a train to New York. Disoriented on the streets of NY, she, in a lucky twist of fate, bumps into Duke Ellington, the jazz icon of the early 1900s, who invites her to his jazz club. She seizes her chance and ends up singing at the jazz club, where she is a smash hit. However cliché it may be, our main character realizes she misses her life back home, her mother, her father, and her town. She catches the last train home (get it?), and the show ends as she opens the door to her house, with the final words of the narration and of the show being: “Mom, Dad, I’m home!”

This rather complicated narrative, has served the CHSMRB well, scoring them a 78.7 and a 78.8 on their first two shows, the Maloney home show, and the New Milford home show respectively. Marching bands are scored generally in three major categories, music, visual, and general effect, 1 to 100, and the average of the three scores is the band’s final score. This is a gross oversimplification, but it needs to be so, because the scoring of marching bands is a very complicated subject by nature. Following this logic, the scores awarded to the CHSMRB makes it appear as if the show could have flopped, but these scores are actually extremely good for this early in the season. For instance, last year it took the 2021 CHSMRB 5 shows to get to the point in scores of where they are now. I have not a doubt in my mind that the Cheshire High School Marching Ram Band will continue to improve exponentially as they are currently, and I implore you to the best of my ability to attend their home show, Music in Motion, on October 8th.