Hammond Technical Vocational High School - Chart Yearbook (Hammond, IN)

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SENIOR BAND With the issuing of this year’s “Chart”, the Tech High School Band will have completed its most successful year from a standpoint of honors won, engagements played, and actual improvement made thru hours of hard practice. Those who believe that playing in the Tech band is a matter of taking up an instrument and attending band rehearsal a 50 minute period each day, are badly mistaken. Many days around contest time the band rehearsed three times a day averaging over an hour at each rehearsal and still some most energetic pupils were getting in some individual practice at home! This spirit it was that boosted the Tech organization above all but one at the sectional contest at Valparaiso on April 25th. Tech won its first Class A trophy at this contest— the second best “A” band in Northern Indiana. Advance newspaper dope listed Hammond High School as a first place band and Elkhart as a sure second or perhaps even a winner over Hammond. Elkhart and other bands marched on the stage with 1 he finest and newest instruments, and a band numbering from 85 to 100. But expensive instruments and a stage full of band members can’t down 54 of the Tech gang full of fight as they were at this time. A week later the same bunch proved themselves to be the third best “A” band in the state of Indiana and Tech had won its first place in a State Contest. Not that a second or third prize in a state event is such a remarkable achievment. This has been done before— many times— by other bands; but not by bands which three years before had competed in Class D w T ith 31 members, and which four years before had never even existed. As many as fifty outside engagements have been played by the Tech organization this year including everything from sacred concerts in local churches to an appearance at Soldiers Field in Chicago before 75,000 to 100,000 people. These appearances have many benefits for our band. They help “sell” the band to the community of Hammond and in fact the whole district, they give band members a feeling of confidence and assurance when playing in public, they give band members a chance to take trips that are otherwise not usually obtained without charge. Such engagements are rated of more value to an organization, in one sense, than contests such as the band competed in this year. Future bands of the school may do well to follow the example set by the band of ’31. If next years organization goes after their problems with the enthusiasm and sincere effort that this year’s band did, it will undoubtedly go far in district competition as well as make a name for itself as one of the best concert and march bands in the state. Twenty-sevtn

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Twenty Eight