Loara HS - March Grandioso - 2016 Loara Band Review 

Well, my high school is in Huntsville, Alabama, and we tried things like "March Slave", and "Overture-1812" by Tchaikovsky, and we did sight read "The Purple Carnival March"once, and we marched in the King Cotton Festival while playing Sousa's "King Cotton March", but we never got past District Competition so we could never go to the State Competition, and there were the two Mardi Gras we attended in 1968 and 1969, playing who knows what, and marching 50 miles in two days each year. BUT, this march, "Grandioso", was one I got to sight read as the only tubist in the Athens, Alabama, junior high school band in 1965 when I was finishing grade eight--that was such fun, and Mr. Jimmy Cowart was such a good teacher at that school (and his wife, Mrs. June Cowart, the year before, had offered to give me a few hundredths of a point on my grade seven English score to allow ma a low "A" if I would see Mr. Cowart about starting out in band--neither of those decent people had an idea what they were starting, but that was and is okay by me). For some reason, my Mother just had to move to Huntsville while I was at Boy Scout camp in July of 1965, and that ended a lot of good things, I guess, but also started some others. All right, then, I lived through it, and here I am, 71 years old, no longer that 13 year old who came "home" to a house emptied, except for my bedroom, in July, 1965, and with no idea where my family (or my next meal) was until the next door neighbor allowed me to use their phone for a long distance call to learn that my Mother and her boyfriend would be by "in a little while" (it turned out to be several hours after dark) to get me and the contents of my bedroom and take me and all of that to the "new place". Okay, it wasn't a good day, but I had music then (school band, and of course The Beach Boys, Beatles, and some others, and the Alamo guitar and Gretsch amp my dad gave me a couple of weeks later), and those were not bad things. No complaints, but some decent memories, and I'm impressed by the Loara high school band, so Thank You!

Trumpets need a little work, but this march is a bitch for trumpet, I'll give them that. The tone of this band has really improved over the past year and they're really capturing that BIG Loara sound. Someone find the recording of Loara at the '81 All Western Band Review...this band is approaching that...I cannot express how impressed I am...

thanks for the beginning (and for all that you do, in general) luis! loved it a lot and am so happy to hear how much my alma mater has improved :) - picc/flute, c/o 2011

I went to a high school next to the town where Seitz grew up. Another of his marches was our fightt song There were a lot of American march composers at the turn of the 19th20th centuries, but today very few of them are known beyond Sousa. Band members may get to play a little Fillmore or edwin Franko Goldman, but high school bands seem long ago to have decided to play anything but a march.