Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 16, 1992 TAG: 9202140079
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NEW RIVER VALLEY 8 EDITION: NEW RIVER
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Medium
PULASKI PLAYS ANOTHER SPORT: WATCH THESE MUSICIANS GO
Posted high on a wall at Pulaski County High School is a quotation from Vince Lombardi, the late Green Bay Packers coach:"The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand."
No, you won't find that Lombardi-ism in the football team's locker room. It's behind band director Bob Priest's chair in the band room.
Priest, like Lombardi, believes in the value of discipline. You have to when you are in charge of 120 students in a marching band and 180 in three concert bands and a jazz band.
Without discipline, with those numbers, there's chaos. And you can't have chaos and produce the top-notch bands Priest has turned out at Pulaski County.
During a rehearsal of the symphonic band, Priest's irritation with his percussion section brought the band to a sudden stop. Where was a missing tympani part?
"Could I have someone play it who's sitting on their hands right now?" he asked on a sour note. A boy quickly grabbed some mallets and snatched the vinyl covers off the kettle-shaped drums.
Priest resumed the practice of a chaconne from Gustav Holst's "First Suite in E-flat for Military Band." He stopped at another point and asked the band if anyone knew what a chaconne is.
It's a little dance; it's not Van Halen, he joked.
Later, Priest agreed that keeping discipline in a high school band is a lot different now than when he was in high school. Inattention then might have brought a blackboard eraser flying in the guilty party's direction.
But despite changes in discipline, some bands have continued to excel.
In the fall, Priest's marching band took top honors at a weekend competition in Wytheville. "We cleaned up; it was great," senior drum major Megan McNeil said.
Later, the band took a superior rating at a state marching competition in Vinton. That award put the young musicians in line for a special Virginia honors band award if the symphonic band can come up with a superior rating in district concert competition March 28 in Abingdon.
Indicating how good Priest's symphonic band can be was an invitation it received to the 36th annual Southern Instrumental Conductors' Conference in Hattiesburg, Miss., this month. The band is not making the trip, though. The school administration decided it would cost band members too many days of class time.
In preparing for upcoming concert competition, Priest had the band working on technique "to get our scales under our fingers," McNeil said. The concert band plays the toughest level of music for high school players: grade six.
The director is a lot of fun most of the time, said McNeil, the band's first-chair alto saxaphonist. Priest doesn't teach his students only the playing side of music, she said. Music theory and music literature are part of the curriculum.
"I have a little different philosophy than what I grew up with," explained Priest, who is in his eighth year at Pulaski County. Instead of just learning to play, he would prefer that his students leave school with some musical knowledge.
Priest said the School Board provides the band with a decent budget. A hard-working band boosters organization makes up the difference - a big difference, about 70 percent of the band's support.
The band's single largest fund-raising event is an annual marching festival, held last year on Oct. 12. Sixteen bands took part and the boosters cleared $4,000, said booster president Carroll Bowling.
Other fund-raising projects include a cheesecake sale and a pizza concession staffed by up to 70 band boosters at home football games.
At a school where sports, particularly football, has built a reputation for excellence, the band gets its share of attention.
"I've heard a lot of good things so far this year," said Jason Jennings, a 17-year-old senior percussionist.
"I don't feel we're neglected because of sports," McNeil said.