Lancer Spotlight: The Linganore Band strikes gold in NYC Saint Patrick’s Day Parade
On March 17, the Linganore High School Marching Band got on a bus to New York City to march in the 262nd Annual St. Patrick’s Day parade.
The band marched 35 blocks during the parade surrounded by cheering spectators. The band performed their signature cadence along with an arrangement of “Patriots on Parade” by Ken Harris.
For many band members, this was their first experience in a longer parade.
“The parade was supposed to be about 45 minutes long, but it ended up being around 1 hour to an hour and 15 minutes long due to [the band] being forced to stop so we could let traffic through. It seemed a lot longer than it was,” said freshman saxophonist Benjamin Teslenko.
The Linganore Band made many stops during this trip, including the One World Observatory, the 911 Memorial and Museum, the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, Central Park, Times Square, and the Hard Rock Cafe.
The trip was jam-packed with activities. Groups would often have short moments where they could choose to enter stores, explore or sit down while waiting for the larger group to move to a different location.
“Our group stopped to look in stores while waiting to meet up to go to Central Park, and since everything was literally stories high, we would stop for two seconds before we had to move on to the next floor,” said senior color guard member Elaine Escamilla.
Band director Kevin Lloyd was primarily excited for the students to get to experience New York together.
“Seeing the expression on the kids’ faces when we first step out onto 5th Avenue in the parade is always my favorite part, because there are literally hundreds of thousands of people along this parade route. Most of the parades we do are more local and couldn’t begin to compare with the size of this,” Lloyd said.
The band has two concerts coming up soon. The Symphonic Band and Orchestra concert will be on May 4 at 7 p.m. The second will be the Jazz and Percussion Ensemble concert on May 9 at 7 p.m. Both concerts will take place in the LHS auditorium.
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