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Much of the Luverne High School Marching Band performance schedule is canceled, including this weekend’s Tri-State Band Festival.
However, festival organizers have developed a special educational clinic for the 52 local students who will take the field at 3:30 p.m. Saturday.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, only 250 spectators will be seated — and spaced apart — in the bleachers for the event. Only spectators with tickets may attend the event.
Instead of marching down Luverne Main Street Saturday morning, band members will work in small groups during a daylong clinic with three guest clinicians — Lane Powell, Steve Lyons and Andy Schmidt.
The clinicians will focus on field competition execution before formally judging the band’s 3:30 p.m. performance.
The modified event brings the Tri-State Band Festival back to its roots.
It began 70 years ago as a learning experience in marching and maneuvering for area high school bands. The festival grew into an annual community event on the last Saturday of each September.
This year festival committee members reached out for $7,000 in community donations to conduct the clinic for the Luverne band. The fundraising goal was met.
“We wanted the kids to know they haven’t been forgotten,” said festival chairman Rachel Renken.
Band participants will receive meals throughout the day and specially designed facemasks and T-shirts.
“We want the clinic to be fun and educational and work toward what performing is by working with experts in the field,” said Luverne High School band director James Jarvie.
Jarvie, along with assistant Morgan Van Holland and colorguard adviser Gavin Folkestad, wrote a shortened field show for this marching band season.
The show, called “Moving On,” is about 6 minutes long and includes three movements or songs.
“‘Moving On’ is a concept for our current circumstances in 2020,” Jarvie said.
The show opens with band and colorguard members taking the field carrying poles as the percussion leads the “haka” or war chant.
Jarvie said the chant and movements completed by the band symbolize the anger that is in today’s world.
In the second movement band members have picked up their instruments to perform “The Circle of Life,” which represents life moving on and events shall pass. The band ends with the song “Baba Yetu.”
“This piece is about how civilization must move on, no matter what, and to maintain an uplifting spirit and positivity in a negative world,” Jarvie said.
Saturday’s event is the first of four events the band is scheduled to participate in this fall.
Saturday night after the Tri-State Festival clinic, band members will travel to Brandon for their regular appearance in the Big Sioux Review for an 8:30 p.m. field performance.
The other performances will be Sioux Falls Festival of Bands on Oct. 3 and the Orange City Dutchmen Field Championships Oct. 10.
“In all the competitions — except for Pipestone — we are the only Minnesota band,” Jarvie said.