Eight Days A Week

The students who make up the Benicia High School Panther band don't expend their talents just on the high-school band.  They organize fundraisers, perform for charities and community organizations, join improv teams, travel to summer competitions, form rock bands and lend their voices to church choirs.

Many of these extra activities happen during the school year, when the musicians start school at 7 a.m. and often don’t get home until after 9 p.m. They learn how to be the ultimate time managers, because the world is their oyster and they don’t want to miss a thing.  

At any given time, you will find band members working out with the high-school Improv Team, and on stage acting and singing in the popular high school musicals, dance shows and talent shows. Twenty one band members provided the live soundtrack to "Beauty and the Beast" at the high school. Five Panthers formed a brass quintet that played for the opening of the botanical gardens and at two civic luncheons. The trumpet section performed the national anthem at opening day for Benicia Little League baseball. 

When the holidays were upon us, many of these musicians loaned their talents to holiday church services, and one member performed at Carnegie Hall. Two members perform in the Vallejo Community Services Big Band with Mr. Martin for the pure love of  jazz. Several have played in other prestigious youth and chamber orchestras in Napa and Contra Costa counties. Some band members formed a jazz combo group and have played at the Solano County Office of Education and a recent teacher retirement/awards event. Others have been part of an a cappella singing group. 

The Panther band also boasts a trumpet family whose brothers and sister have made up the trumpet section of the Napa Valley Youth Symphony for the past two years — they've even recruited three other Panther band members. The siblings were featured soloists at the Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. 

Two band members formed the rock band “Solar Prominence” when they were in middle school. The American Diabetes Association and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation hired them to perform and emcee their gathering at Yerba Buena Gardens and lighting ceremony in San Francisco for World Diabetes Day.  Last year they placed second in the high-school battle of the bands and they have played in support of Arts in the Park and the Relay for Life. 

Two other band members are members of The Blue Devils, which is a drum and bugle corps based in Concord. It is a summer marching music activity that combines brass, percussion and color guard to perform a competitive show. They start practicing on weekends in the winter, and then six days a week, 12 hours a day in late spring and summer. They tour the country competing against other drum corps, ending with the DCI Championships in Indianapolis. In 2010, The Blue Devils won the 2010 DCI Open Class Championship, and one Panther was named “Rookie of the Year.” 

This brings us to the recent Relay for Life held May 21 to 22 at the high school football stadium.  With their first free Saturday in months, 24 band members formed two teams, raising $3,000 to help in the fight against cancer. A large block of the Panther band also performed in the opening ceremony.  The two team captains used their valuable leadership skills to lead their teams, which walked more than 204 miles in the 24-hour period.  

Musical education in schools enriches the lives of the musician and enables them to give back to the community, leaving it richer culturally. After seeing what young people can squeeze into a single year, this writer needs to sit down for a moment and catch her breath, because the keyboard is on fire.