High temperatures, expectations

It's just Week 3 of practice and the grassy field behind Wando High School already is wearing thin from constant footwork.

From a tower overlooking the field, Tim Cole shouts out commands to the high school band, comparing their formations to sheets of colored triangles and zig-zags marked out in a binder called the drill.

The Wando Marching Band is just beginning to put the steps and music together.

"You all are wrong, you know that right?" Michael Gray, the band's visual coordinator, calls from the tower. "Why did we even do this?"

Down below, 240 students stop, waiting for new instructions.

Gray envisions what the performance will look like, large carnival mask props and all. The Charleston artist came up with the visual concept for the show — "Identity" — after band director Scott Rush selected the music last November.

Throughout the show, color guard members will wear three masks, removing them one at a time to reveal another beneath.

"It's this whole analogy of you really don't know who anybody is," Gray says.

During the first act, called "Incarnata," the band plays parts of Bela Bartok's String Quartet No. 4 arranged for band, and excerpts from Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra.

It's uneasy-sounding music combined with the opening symbolism of masked color guard members paired with horn players who try to unmask them.

"I've seen you. I've been intrigued by you. I need to know who you are," Gray explains.

The second song, "Nessun Dorma" from the Puccini opera Turandot represents the softer, more beautiful side of who we are; it's introspection, Gray says.

"In the morning when you wake up and look in the mirror ... is that me?" Gray says. "We all have masks to deal with."

The show will end with Symphony No. 5 by Gustav Mahler, a joyous, upbeat piece of music.

"The third piece is the jubilation of finding out who we are," Gray says.

But on this third week of practice, students are still figuring out the first act. They are overwhelmed with information and instruction. Gray hears anxiety in the drumbeats and the synthesizers' repeated high-pitched ping.

On the field, sophomore Jasmyne Morgan-Wigfall marches flag in hand, numbers running through her mind.

"Flip, march, flag, dive, don't hit anybody. Flip, left, right." Wigfall says to herself.

Fellow guard member, senior Chaniqua Mazyck, swapped clarinet for the guard this year and says marching in the guard comes with added pressure. Senior Laura Lanier agrees. "You have a pole in your hand," she says. "If you drop it, everyone is going to know."

A drop like that could be enough to knock Wando from its first-place pedestal. Wando's marching band performances have made them state champ for three consecutive years.

"We really kind of compete within ourselves," Rush says adding that there is no pressure to win a fourth time.

But senior Quinton Wilson, clarinet, says he feels it.

The band practices on the field six hours a day three days a week, weeks before school begins and continues a rigorous schedule throughout the season, all for an eight-minute show.

At state competitions everyone will be focused on Wando, Wilson says.

"Everybody expects so much from you," he says. If another school wins, Wilson says, the crowd, instead of focusing on who won, will say, "Wando didn't get first this year."

Reach Jessica Johnson at 937-5921 or jjohnson@postandcourier.com.