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High notes in Texas

Durango High marching band to play at Alamo Bowl

Fifty-five members of the Red Demon marching band from Durango High School will greet 2015 from San Antonio, Texas, where they will perform the next day during halftime at the Alamo Bowl.

The Red Demon band will be one of 13 high school groups from nine states – 600-plus youths – performing a medley of Bruno Mars’ numbers together in front of a live audience of potentially 65,000.

Family and friends in Durango can look and listen because the game between UCLA and Kansas State will be televised on ESPN at 8:45 p.m. Jan. 2.

The Red Demon band also will perform solo on the San Antonio River Walk, a commercially developed strip along the San Antonio River. They will have time to take in the Alamo and Six Flags Over Texas amusement park.

“There’s a super-excited mentality among band members,” said Reiley Waldo, center of the band’s drum line and student assistant to band director Katharine Reed. “This is super awesome.”

Reiley, who has a choice of college scholarships, drum majors Scott Erickson and Nick Wilbur, and trumpet player Maryna Pohlman have won individual recognition.

Enthusiasm for participatory music-making at DHS can be largely attributed to Reed, said school district spokeswoman Julie Popp.

Since Reed’s arrival four years ago, the music groups have hit high notes, Popp said.

“Enrollment in band is up more than 50 percent,” Popp said. “They’ve qualified for state competition the past two years after an absence of 20 years.”

Reed has music flowing in her veins.

She is a fourth-generation band leader, following her maternal great-grandfather and grandfather and her mother into the baton-wielding business.

An uncle was musical, too, writing and arranging music for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus.

Reed, whose primary instrument is the trumpet, received a degree from Iowa State University, where she was student director of the pep band and marching band.

Reed also directs the DHS concert band (wind and percussion), an orchestra (strings), a jazz ensemble and a pep band.

A number of students perform in more than one group. But Reed, without duplication, is helping 130 students – about 10 percent of the DHS student body – over the musical hurdles.

The marching band has 75 members, but 20 will not accompany the group on its 15-hour bus ride to Texas because of conflicting holiday plans.

Corporate angels cover some of the expenses of band travel. The Bank of Colorado in years past donated a trailer to carry band equipment, and Eagle Block pays for a truck. Other donors are Durango Embroidery and Print, Vaughn A. Johnson Orthodontics, Design Plumbing & Hydronics, Peak Energy and ImageNet Consulting.

Graduation will claim 18 members of the marching band, six of whom have been Reed’s students since their freshman year.

daler@durangoherald.com



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