HOME OF THE AWARD-WINNING PANTHER BAND!!!

Welcome to the website for the Bonney Lake High School Panther Band Program in Bonney Lake, WA!!! 

We strive to enrich and improve the lives of students through various musical arts experiences. While the band program competes at several festivals and competitions with a wide variety of ensembles, the focus is music education. Everyone has the opportunity to grow & develop a deeper understanding of aural beauty... while aquiring skills that they will carry throughout life.

This is your 'one-stop-shop' for everything about the Panther Band Program including calendars, course offerings, and our growing media content!

With a band enrollment that consisenly grows every year, the program includes a field show band, parade marching & pep band, three wind bands, two jazz bands, percussion ensemble, drumline, colorguard & winterguard, a musical pit orchestra, and several instrumental chamber ensembles & jazz combos.

The Band Program at Bonney Lake strives to maintain a balanced program in all facets of music education, including the development of the individual musician. Over the years, the Panther Band program has consistently produced excellent musicians who are in demand by colleges and universities throughout the Northwest and many parts of the country.

The tradition of excellence held by the BLHS Band is developed through the hard work and dedication of current students & music staff, past members, our private instructors, families, and more. We are proud to represent our school and community! GO BAND!!!

#BuildTheHill

#ClawsOut

The Bonney Lake High School Panther Band began in 2005 under the direction of Vanessa Sielert. Once Vanessa moved to become the Sax Professor at the University of Idaho, Don Neptun became the next Director of Bands and founded the Panther Marching Band. Once he left to work towards his career as a composer (eventually returning to the district where he currently teaches at Sumner Middle School), Travis Mills stepped in and brought the program to the next level when he had the Field Show Band compete at a BOA competition in Utah (a feat not undertaken by many other WA State Marching Bands due to the reality that Western WA does not have the strongest field show culture or even an official circuit in the PNW). After the Mills era, Meredith Heinzmann brought the program to new heights in terms of Wind Band & Jazz culture, combining musical excellence with a positive 'band family' presence. After Heinzmann’s tenure, Brandon Cain became the Director of Bands, and has since boosted up the parade & pep, while taking the jazz program throughout the state and continuing to make the wind bands the best they can be. The programmed repertoire challenges the students and highlights their strengths. As a recent example, in the BLHS Wind Ensemble performed Frank Ticheli’s “Angels in the Architecture” in addition to Percy Grainger’s “Children’s March” during Festival Season, and even performed a Trombone Concerto at the following concert in Spring, featuring a graduating senior who took 3rd place at state.

LOGOS OF THE PANTHER BAND

In addition to the school logos of BLHS, the Panther Band Program has a few as well! Ever since the school opened, students and music staff of the program have have sought to create an image that represents who we are. Over the years, the images have gone through various designs & revisions; from music notes to claw marks, there has continued to be refinement. Eventually, we landed on the idea of having a panther in the shape of Mount Rainier [Tahoma], due to its prominent presence as a glorious view from our school. In regards to the current set of logos, there are two options of shape: rectangular, or circular. 

*The rectangle logos were designed first, where the Mount-Rainier-Panther is facing a treble clef, and the colors in the logo reflect the colors of the school. In early 2025, the original rectangle logo was updated to match the exact hex code color guidelines of the school, and make the image higher resolution while fixing a few minor nuances. This rectangle logo has a few variations (offering three background color options of teal, black, or white), in addition to variations of the color of the text below the panther. 

*The circular logos were designed second, to allow for them to better fit the circular profile picture window of most digital sites (Instagram, Youtube, etc). The circle logos have variation of color AND text. Some of the circular logos represent the overarching program, while the other variations are altered to represent the alumni, or the PBA. As for all of them, they feature the Mount Rainier Panther "jumping out" of the image, creating claw marks in the process!

...Eventually, the Panther Band Alliance made their own modern day rectangular logo, and it's quite the beauty! 

Check out just a few of our modern logos posted below: