Hundreds of parents and community members gathered at Northern New Mexico College Feb. 27 for a concert put on by the Española Valley High School and Española Middle School band programs.
It was one of several concerts the bands have played this school year, still only the second in their history. The programs were kick-started after the Española School District received a large appropriation from the New Mexico Legislature in 2019.
Steve Iliff, the instructor for both the Middle and High School programs, said students have grown tremendously and are becoming more familiar with their instruments.
“It’s starting to feel like a real program that everyone is buying into, rather than just like an elective class,” he said.
That buy-in was on full display during the concert.
The bands were split into two groups between older and younger students. Each played a host of different songs and tunes, with many individual students performing solo pieces in front of the large audience.
Iliff said the dedication required of students to perform solos is impressive.
“They pick those themselves,” he said. “They do those 100 percent outside of rehearsal.”
The solos included recognizable favorites like “Fly to the Moon” and “Smooth Criminal” by Michael Jackson, the latter being performed by High School sophomore Lajon Nastacio on the tenor saxophone.
Nastacio said he spent two hours a day for a week straight practicing the famed pop song in order to get it right during the show.
“I was practicing during school, after school, taking my saxophone on the bus, which was hectic,” he said.
Unlike many students in the band program, he has had many years of experience playing in bands at his previous schools in Gallup and Albuquerque. However, he said his time in Española stands out from the rest.
“There’s a lot more pride to be in this band than there was in Albuquerque,” Nastacio said.
The band also performed a “sight reading,” where Iliff showed them a piece of music they had never seen before and told them to play it only after a few minutes.
After several minutes of deliberation, the band began playing the song “Linus and Lucy,” capturing the sound of the famous tune.
Sight reading is common in band competitions. Iliff said the bands were supposed to go to a competition in Los Alamos on Monday.
Iliff said that, while the community is buying in and supporting the program, more will be needed if they want to start a marching band at the High School. He said it will most likely take at least two more years to get a marching band up and running.
“We’re still kind of building the really hardworking performance culture that a lot of band programs really work to achieve,” he said.
He said he would also like additional staffing so they can have rehearsals before and after school.
For Nastacio and Española’s other band students, the concert highlighted all the hard work they put in the program during the school year.
“This is our best concert yet. We put a lot of effort into this,” Nastacio said.