GOSHEN COUNTY – The biggest concert of the year in Goshen County starts with the meeting of just three minds: Richard Zigweid of Torrington High School, Erin Jespersen of Lingle-Ft. Laramie High School and Brittany Milstead of Southeast High School.
All accomplished musicians in their own right, it’s like a Who’s Who list of the best music-makers in the county.
They’re the band directors of the respective area high schools, and for one night they’ll engineer the biggest grouping of Goshen County students outside of the all-county prom. It all starts with a meeting sometime before October between the directors, where they pick the music – and then the work begins.
It will all come together at the Goshen County Christmas Gala concert, set for Tuesday, Dec. 18 at 7 p.m. at Torrington High School, featuring the bands from all three local schools coming together as one to perform an array of holiday songs to help ring in the season.
It’s just one night, but according to Zigweid, it’s a night to remember.
“It’s absolutely a rush,” he said. “I’m used to a bigger band, but it’s not as big as the one we have when we get everybody together. The kids get to know each other, and then they hit that moment where they’re like ‘yeah, this is going to work.’ That’s awesome. It’s a complete rush for us as directors as well as for the kids.”
The gala concert will showcase a final, near-perfect product. What the audience sees, however, is just the payoff.
One night only
The concert is just one night, but it’s the result of months of hard work – and one long, tough day - by the musicians.
After the music teachers pick the pieces they’ll be conducting and pass out the music to the other schools, all three bands start working on the songs individually for about two months leading up to the concert. The gala band will only play together the day of the concert – it will rehearse all day, then perform that night.
“We start working on different time lines,” Zigweid said. “Generally, October is when we start working the music. It’s always different preparing in our classes than it is on the day. We have the kids all together for one rehearsal to put it together.”
That rehearsal is a beast. For the students, it means sitting in with other musicians they may have never even met before, much less performed with. The teachers have just one school day – minus travel time for Southeast and Lingle-Ft. Laramie to get to Torrington and a lunch break – to mold the 70-person group of relative strangers into a band.
“We never leave the high school – we’re there to get down to business,” Milstead said. “It’s a long day. They put in a lot of playing time through that day. They come back and they put a lot out there that night. It’s really special, and the kids know how special it is. It’s cool because it seems like kids don’t always show how special they are, but for this one they really allow it to be special.”
On the day of the concert, all three bands arrive at Torrington High School as early as they can. From there, it’s all about preparation. According to Jespersen, the day is planned out in advance – as much as it can be, anyway.
“We make a schedule, but we also have to be flexible,” she said. “We don’t know how a piece is going to come together. We don’t know how quickly or slowly it will come together until that day. We put together a generalized schedule and we don’t share that with the kids, but they know that every piece gets about 40 minutes and we re-evaluate at lunch.”
At 3 p.m., that’s it. Southeast and Lingle-Ft. Laramie students have to be back at their buildings before the buses leave for the day, and there’s no time to practice when the students arrive for the concert that evening. But, for the students, it’s a special concert – and they rise to the occasion.
“They love this concert”
For band students, there’s a moment in October when the gala music is introduced and the excitement begins to build – to be a part of such a huge band, to learn new material and, of course, for the holiday season.
According to Milstead, the upperclassmen set an enthusiastic tone and it spreads to the younger musicians – even if the freshmen playing in their first gala concert don’t quite understand the scale of it at the beginning.
“They love this concert,” she said. “They always get really excited when we start preparing for it. It’s really fun to watch the juniors and seniors who have done it for a few years tell the freshmen how awesome it is. The freshmen, they just don’t understand what all exactly goes into this. It’s a huge deal for the kids and they love coming together and playing together and getting a chance to play that high-level music that they don’t really have the instrumentation for all of the time.”
Southeast senior Molly Ross will be playing in her fourth and final gala concert on Tuesday. Ross has played in Milstead’s band at Southeast since junior high school, but the opportunity to come together with the other schools and be a part of something so big is still special to her.
“I think it’s super fun because we have the opportunity to play in a big band,” she said. “At Southeast, we have a very small band. We get to hear everything come together and it’s really cool.”
Kaylan Maze will likely be one of the most experienced musicians in the concert – this is her fifth gala performance. She had the opportunity to perform in the concert in eighth grade thanks to a special circumstance in the L-FL schedule, but the excitement hasn’t worn off.
“This concert is just really fun because it’s so much bigger,” Maze said. “This is one of my favorite concerts. I love all of our concerts, but this one is way more fun because it’s not just me playing my instrument.”
That’s one of the perks for the musicians – in the bigger band, there’s a little more room for error. Typically at L-FL and Southeast, there is just one student on each instrument, which leaves little room for error. At the gala, the musicians get to be a part of a whole section.
“They don’t have to be perfect-perfect,” Jespersen said. “We always talk about in the smaller bands that you’re the only one on your part and if you make a mistake, everybody knows it. We work really hard on that. They still have that mentality when they go, but they are a little bit more relaxed. It’s a little more fun because they get to play more challenging music, and the burden is off of their shoulders to be perfect.”
The gala doesn’t just provide new challenges for the musicians, either. Each band director has their own style, and it shows through from the pieces they’ve chosen to the way they physically conduct the band. Zigweid prefers powerful, complicated pieces and conducts with intense, direct motions. Jespersen usually picks the jazzier pieces, and her conducting style is light and flowing, with almost a bounce in her step. Milstead likes slower, beautiful pieces and conducts those with big, sweeping movements. The kids even make it a game during the early practices to try to figure out which director picked which songs.
“It’s kind of challenging,” Ross said. “They pick different styles of music, like Mr. Zigweid likes more fast and complicated songs. Mrs. Jespersen likes the smooth, flowy kinds of things. It’s really nice to get a different feel and more experience with them.”
The teachers look forward to working with different students, too. According to Zigweid, conducting such a large band with so many fresh faces is a fun exercise.
“It’s a challenge, but it’s also an opportunity,” he said. “The kids are used to us and what we expect and the things that we focus on. It’s really good for the kids to get different musical perspectives and learn how to follow different directors. They learn how to adapt to other directors’ musical choices. The wonderful thing about music is you can make a different musical choice and it’s never right or wrong. “As a conductor, you try to get the kids to do what you want to do, and it has been awesome.”
Coming together
The beautiful thing about the Christmas Gala – besides the music, of course – is students from all three schools are coming together to do more than compete with one another.
“It’s one concert to show that the kids from Goshen County aren’t always rivals,” Jespersen said. “It shows they can come together and make something beautiful and wonderful and get us in the Christmas spirit.”
By the end of the practice day, three bands will become one. The skill level of the musicians and conductors alike will ensure the music comes together, but the best memories come from the fringe benefits – the inside jokes, the bond formed by performing the same pieces, the camaraderie of performing together before a packed THS auditorium and, most importantly, becoming a band.
“This is one of the few things that Goshen County is able to do with all three schools,” Milstead said. “It’s special.”
