Highland band gets creative to perform holiday concert

RIVERSIDE - When COVID-19 restrictions threatened to prevent the Highland Secondary School band students from preforming before Christmas, band director Andrew McDonald got creative.

Back in September, McDonald picked 'White Christmas” as one of the high school band songs.

'It would be a perfect holiday piece to play, and people would enjoy it,” he said.

Near the end of November, McDonald said they had to postpone the winter concert until January due to recommendations from the governor, but he thought it would be odd to play a Christmas song after Christmas.

McDonald considered a variety of options. The band could continue with the Dec. 21 concert, play 'White Christmas” at the end of January, or do a recording.

He decided to do a recording.

The band had the additional challenge of being separated into two groups. Due to the hybrid model having A and B days, McDonald never has all of the students at the same times.

On Dec. 14, the band started the project.

The A Day group played each of their individual sections as many times as possible, while McDonald recorded it on his phone. The B Day group did the same thing on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, he played the best take of B Day for the band and then listened to the recording while conducting.

'I did my best to keep the A Day band closely aligned with the B Day band,” he said.

McDonald said the biggest challenge for the students was learning the songs without hearing certain parts, and keeping the tempo the same throughout the song.

The two recordings were sent to McDonald's friend Teddy Van Winkle, a graduate student at the University of North Texas. Van Winkle had experience in audio engineering and offered to mix the two for free.

'Within two hours he had synced them together, made some quick edits and had put together the finished product,” McDonald said.

The recording can be listed to at https://youtu.be/-LS8vKuG3Ek

This is McDonald's first year as a band teacher. He graduated from the University of Iowa in fall 2019 and was a substitute teacher before landing his job at Highland.

He said if he can get through this unique year, future years will be smooth sailing.