Revere’s new band director led the Minutemen into the annual Revere Marching Band Invitational with practice, hard work and energy to attempt qualification for state competition. 

On September 30, Revere High School hosted its annual band competition, its first with new band director Tom Chiera. At the competition, several bands from different schools performed in front of a panel of judges and received a rating. Revere, the host school, performed last with the theme middle ground, or meeting in the middle. This was a big event for Chiera and his students. 

“Anytime that you’re going to fill a campus with a couple 1000 different high school performers, and all of their volunteers and all of their families and friends it is a pretty epic spectacle to just see everything under the lights,” Chiera said.

The Revere Marching Band Invitational creates a lot of anticipation and excitement in the band program. This event brings the band together in excitement, including students and staff. Senior band student Shane Yankotvitz participated in the event this year. 

“It’s always nice to get to show people what we’ve been working on,” Yankovitz said. 

The competition gives students the chance to perform in front of audiences there just for them. The band used this opportunity to showcase their talent. With all of the build up to the event, there comes an equal amount of preparation.

“If you drive by the Revere campus, there’s going to be a lot of equipment all over the place. And then the stadium gates will open at about five o’clock,” Chiera said.

 The event requires volunteers of all types. Students, parents and teachers all played a role in orchestrating the event. Students took on an assortment of tasks starting earlier in the day to help prepare. 

“We’re all signing up for different roles, whether that be taking bands around, like around the school in practice to practice fields and stuff, or just running back and forth with documents and USBs and stuff. So there’s a lot of volunteering involved in this,” Yankovitz said.

The Revere band prepared for the Revere Marching Band Invitational in class with the new director. They have class every day during seventh period and work on their performing skills. 

“We’re continuing to detail our music achievement, we’re continuing to learn our kind of our visual package outside and how they move together, and choreography. So that is a constant evolution,” Chiera said

Chiera is new to the program, so he would like to bring a renewed energy. The mechanics of the Revere Marching Band Invitational remain unchanged even with the addition of a new band director. 

“He’s definitely keeping pretty much all of what we used to do to make sure it runs smoothly, since it has worked so well in the past,” Yankovitz said. 

The Revere Marching Band Invitational runs like any other sporting or performance event. It has judges, an audience and competitors. 

“Each visiting school will have a 15 minute window have to perform on the field in front of an audience that that’s, that’s full of family and friends, but also has an adjudication panel where those those experts are evaluating kind of what you’re doing how you’re doing it,” Chiera said.

The judges are experts in the field, and they gave critiques and feedback to each band in order to help them improve in competition. The scores range from one to five. One is a superior rating and the best score possible. The band director’s goal is to receive a score of one. Chiera experienced the Revere Marching Band Invitational from the perspective of the host school’s director rather than a guest director for the first time this year. Picking him to direct Revere’s band involved the highschool’s principal, Dr. Peltz

“Miss Karen Arbogast led the initial search and did the posting. We had the fortunate help of Dr. Darren Lebeau as well to be part of going through the resume sort of sorting, we had over 80 applicants for the band position,” Peltz said.

The choice involved numerous staff members sorting through the resumes and selecting the appropriate choice out of the eighty applicants, which was ultimately Chiera. 

Despite the changes to the band, they still marched on to the Revere Marching Band Invitational in hope of receiving a superior rating during the final performance of the event. In the end, they received their superior rating of one. 

To read more about the band click HERE