Exit light, enter night, take my hand — off to congratulate a Virginia high school marching band!
The Oakton High School Marching Cougars just won Metallica’s Inaugural Marching Band Contest, announced this past Sunday night on ESPN.
“It feels pretty awesome,” band director Jamie VanValkenburg told WTOP. “The kids are pumped; the community, school and band parents are really pumped. It was such a group effort to put it together that we’re all just ecstatic. Sunday night, one of my sectional instructors texted me a little after 9 [p.m.] and said, ‘Congrats on winning the Metallica completion,’ and I texted back, ‘Wait, what? Did we win?’ … It hasn’t [set in yet]. I’m still processing it.”
More than 450 high schools and colleges across the U.S. joined when the contest was announced in April of last year.
“In the spring, we had not determined our marching theme for the fall yet … I was on social media and happened to see the announcement,” VanValkenburg said. “I’m a huge Metallica fan. I grew up at the perfect time to experience the band. They launched in 1981, so I was in middle school when the album ‘And Justice For All’ came out. I recall MTV played the song ‘One’ practically on a loop. … So I thought, ‘Why don’t we enter the competition?'”
So, he and his music arranger Kent Baker created a Metallica-themed performance called “Parade to Black.”
“We tried to recreate the feeling of being at a Metallica concert,” VanValkenburg said. “To create the feeling of a stage, we had fake light poles like an outdoor concert and we moved the sideline percussion onto the field. … It’s difficult to adapt heavy metal to a marching show. … Kent put together a great medley: ‘The Unforgiven,’ ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls,’ ‘Turn the Page.’ … The closer was ‘Enter Sandman’ and ‘The Memory Remains.'”
After football season, they filmed the routine and submitted the video by the Nov. 17 deadline.
“We decided to not do it at a football game so we could control the crowd noise and perform it more than once in case we needed to do another take,” VanValkenburg said. “After marching season was over, we reserved our stadium on a Tuesday night and we had one camera set up in the press box and we had parents with other cameras for close-ups on soloists, features, and we hired an audio engineer to come make a professional audio recording.”
In December, Metallica announced that Oakton High School was chosen as one of five finalists in the small-band category (under 75 members). Overall, there were three high school categories and two collegiate categories.
“I got a text from another teacher here at Oakton who is a former band parent at another high school who loves marching bands and she congratulated me for being a finalist,” VanValkenburg said. “The next day, the way I revealed it to the kids was I just put it up on the screen on the smart board as they were coming in. Then, with my phone I filmed their reactions when they read that we were finalists. It was great. The jaws dropping was epic.”
The winner was announced this past Sunday, meaning the school will earn $15,000 worth of band equipment.
“It’s a big deal for our band and community,” VanValkenburg said. “I have great students, they want to be good, they’re willing to work hard. … I have great band parents that are super helpful. I’m fortunate to work in a performing arts department where we are all good at what we do. … There’s a bit of irony here: the founder of Napster went to Oakton High School — and Metallica was one of the bands that sued Napster over piracy!”
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