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Mark your calendars, folks!!  The Valley Showdown and ValleyFest marching band competitions will be aired on Iowa Public Television!!  Be sure to check out the fantastic performances by the Saydel Marching Eagles, as well as numerous other bands from Iowa and the surrounding Midwest!

You can find information on the broadcasts here:

Nov. 29th – Valley Showdown

and

Dec. 7th – ValleyFest

Well folks, the competitive marching season is upon us!  Tomorrow both Saydel and West Marshall will head to their first competition of the Fall 2009 Season!  It’s been a crazy week running back and forth between schools trying to fill in choreography, tweak design details, get equipment ready, and clean clean clean!!  Saydel and West Marshall have both endured their fair share of setbacks already this season, but are on their way to incredibly successful performances in the next few weeks!! (As long as we can put a stop to all the injury and illness that’s been popping up!)

Saydel will venture off to Fort Dodge, where they will begin their morning with a clinic–The panel is incredibly talented and will be a great asset to the band in their preparation for the evening performance!  The band will take the field around 6:30 PM and will be the final 3A band of the evening.  Their classical music themed show will be a interesting new direction for the band, which is coming off of their most successful season in recent years.  The new band director, Jennifer Williams, is doing incredible things with the program, and it will be exciting to see how the season plays out!

West Marshall will be heading to the Oktemberfest Parade in Marshalltown in the morning and then will trek on over to the Marion Marching Invitational.  They will be the first band on the field and will step off around 5:00 PM.  The colorguard hasn’t had much time to put the new choreography with the drill, but they have been doing extremely well this week with getting their work cleaned and ready for the show!  Check out the videos below from rehearsal this morning, where we were getting used to the brand new show silks, and cleaning the last section of the show.  They’re making a lot of progress!!

GOOD LUCK to everyone off to competition this weekend!

Check out the Events Page for some new rehearsal and performance dates!!

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly the summers can fly by! One blink of the eyes and it’s “Back to school” time. Things are really picking up around here as we head into the marching band season!

West Marshall wrapped up their 4-day Band Camp on Thursday of this past week and celebrated their success with a water balloon fight! The band has stepped up and is light years ahead of where they were at this time last year! Check out the Media Page for some new photos from Band Camp!

I have recently begun working with the Saydel Colorguard again. They had evening rehearsals early last week and the show is coming along extremely well! It’s exciting to see the pieces of the puzzle start to fall into place as things get re-vamped and the Band Program begins it’s journey in a new direction! It’s going to be a wonderful and unpredictable season!

Time to get back to work with choreography and uniform designs! Keep an eye out for more photos and updates coming soon!

-Darrin

This past Saturday, West Marshall kicked off their 2009 Marching Band season with the Rose Festival Parade in State Center, Iowa. The weather was perfect, the crowd was excited, and the girls were ready to head out into the world as the 2009 West Marshall Colorguard for the very first time!

The entire band rehearsed on Thursday and Friday morning leading up to the parade, focusing mainly on technique. The band also spent some time going through the 2009 Fall Production music for the first time! The colorguard worked on flag basics and movement for most of both days, and showed a vast improvement towards the end of the day Friday! The guard explored some new areas of dance and will continue to develop the technique that will be utilized in both the fall and winter productions this season.

The fall production is finally starting to fall into place, and it looks like this will be the most exciting and demanding season the West Marshall Band Program has seen in quite a number of years! Keep an eye out for this underdog 2A band!!!

Make sure to head on over to the media page and check out the photos from the Rose Festival Parade in the West Marshall folder!

Conflicts have come up for the band directors and guard members who had planned on participating in the Clinic that was scheduled for this Friday, June 12th, so it has been can canceled.

Head on over to the Event Calendar page and check out the newly added performance schedule for the West Marshall Colorguard! Dates are still tentative, but we don’t foresee any changes happening.

This is going to an incredibly exciting year for the entire band program at West Marshall so mark these dates down and come see us at a performance this fall!

Thanks!

New DCI Show in West Des Moines, IA.

Hello! While at the Iowa Bandmasters Association Conference on Thursday, I ran into Greg Orwoll, Executive Director of the Colts Drum & Bugle Corps, and he told me to promote the new DCI show in West Des Moines, Iowa. I didn’t even know there was a show coming to the area, so I was excited to hear that drum corps fans in central Iowa would have a chance to see some of the best corps in the country up close and personal!

The show will be held at Valley Stadium in West Des Moines on June 25th, 2009. It’s an incredible line-up and if you have the time, you should definitely check it out! Click on the photo to get more information about the show.

Hope to see all of you there!!!

Welcome to my new website, darrinmell.com!