Marching with aloha

Three hundred eighty-eight Hawaii band students from 44 schools on six islands will converge today in Los Angeles for an intense five-day crash rehearsal before the Pasadena Tournament of Roses’ 125th Rose Parade on New Year’s Day.

The unique Hawaii All State Marching Band’s 220 Oahu members have never met, much less played music or marched with, the 168 others from Lanai, Molokai, Hawaii island, Maui and Kauai, who have practiced on their respective islands.

The All State band, formed in 2002, was invited back to perform in the Rose Parade on this 11th anniversary of its 2003 initial appearance and gives Hawaii residents another reason to tune in at 6 a.m. New Year’s Day before the 100th Rose Bowl.

Are the diverse members ready to perform as one on Wednesday for this huge, nationally televised event?

"We’re getting there," John Riggle, managing director and founder of the band, said Monday at the last practice for Oahu band members before Los Angeles, held at Aloha Stadium. "When they meet each other for the first time" and play together, that’s when they’ll say to one another, ‘Hey, that felt pretty good,’" he said.

The students say they’re up to the challenge.

"At first it’s daunting, but after we start marching, I’m positive we can all pull together," said Kristen Andres, 16, a Sacred Hearts Academy junior who usually plays the quince (a five-piece drum set) but is playing the toere (Tahitian log drum) for the Rose Parade performance of "Tahiti-Tahiti" and "Masese."

On Monday, Kerry Wasano, the band’s music director, told the students that if they want to perform well on the big day, "then bus’ the tail now!"

Wasano, who has a taskmaster reputation, is taking his Maui High School marching band to the Rose Parade in 2015 (bands are chosen two years in advance). But the challenge with a composite group is getting members of 44 different bands to follow him.

The students had been rehearsing without instruments to navigate the 110-degree turn they will march on Colorado Avenue in Pasadena.

"It’s the hardest place for a band to make a turn," Riggle said, adding it is also where the television cameras will be situated.

A third of the players come from schools without a marching band. Some are not physically fit. So marching in unison, with precision, and not running out of steam on a 6.5-mile parade route poses a challenge, Wasano said.

During practice, Wasano told the musicians to decrease the volume at the appropriate times — that the softer they play, the louder it’s going to sound when they crescendo back up.

"It’s tough to play that way all the time," he said.

It’s especially hard on percussionists carrying heavy instruments and for brass musicians who hold their trombones, baritones and trumpets parallel to the ground.

"It’s all about having everyone look identical," he said. "There are so many things going on at the same time."

He added, "For the kids to dedicate themselves to music and performing is a testament to their willingness to work hard in representing the state."

Despite the rigors of practice, trumpet player Pono Sterling, 14, a 4-foot-8 Kamehameha Schools ninth-grader, said, "It’s fun ’cause there’s a lot of new people I get to meet. It’s kind of fun because you have to have teamwork. You learn to work with a lot of people."

At Monday’s practice, Mililani High School senior Kris Ward, with a serious face and erect posture, played a single beat as the rest of the band marched in step without instruments.

The band members then picked up their instruments and cranked out their rendition of the two toe-tapping tunes as the dancers performed, all the while marching along a model of the route in the stadium parking lot.

Even without their uniforms and costumes, the band looked and sounded Rose Parade-worthy. But that was not the product of monthly group rehearsals only.

"We’ve had to practice on our own and be responsible about it," Ward said. "The band code is we go home to practice, and we come to practice to practice what we practiced at home," something his Mililani band director has instilled.

Ward said he is excited at the prospect of visiting the mainland for the first time and performing at the Disneyland Resort as well as in the big parade.

Band directors from 44 public and private schools each nominated 15 students, giving students from small schools — which have no chance of qualifying for such a large event — an opportunity to play.

This makes the band truly representative of Hawaii, said 71-year-old Riggle, band director for 32 years at Kamehameha Schools Kapalama, which has gone to the Rose Parade.

If they accept, students and parents sign a contract agreeing to pay the roughly $3,000 for the trip and the once-a-month practice on their own island from February to December. All State band directors, one from each island, work on a volunteer basis, including Riggle.

The cost is worth the experience, parents say.

Danny Fujimoto said he didn’t mind paying $500 every two months to send his daughter Shayna, a McKinley High School senior, to Pasadena.

"I was happy she got selected," he said. "It’s only once every four years."

Another parent, Vicki Galam, said, "The kids make us proud. They really work hard."

Although she and her husband can’t afford to go, she said she enjoyed the practice and knows it’s a great opportunity for her daughter, Samantha Garcia, an alto sax player at Saint Francis School. Garcia has a 3.95 grade-point average and has been accepted at four colleges, three with president’s scholarships.

The teens also appreciate the opportunity.

"It’s one of those big things that come your way," said Shayna Fujimoto. "I didn’t even expect to be recognized" out of 100 school band members.

Fujimoto, who maintains a 4.0 GPA and takes advanced-placement classes, said what’s hard about playing in a marching band is "being able to know what everyone else is thinking without verbally saying anything. … You can’t talk to or look at each other. You just have to have it drilled into you."

She added, "You need to forget about yourself sometimes and do what you have to do for the group."

In the early 2000s the then-president of the Rose Parade asked Riggle, who took the Kamehameha Schools band to Pasadena multiple times, whether he had ever thought about making "a band for all of the Hawaii islands, a composite."

The resulting All State Band went to the 2003 Rose Parade, the 2009 parade and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2005 and 2011, Riggle said.

The performance includes hula dancers wearing neon yellow skirts, with red-feathered ipu (gourd instruments) and Tahitian dancers with red skirts. Musicians will wear haku and wrist lei, Mamo Howell custom-designed aloha shirts, black pants and hau hula skirts, Riggle said.

Ariana Bean, 18, a 2013 Kahuku High School graduate, trombonist and assistant drum major, summed up the experience: "It’s a lot of things but it’s fun in the end."