Harlingen Hawk band finishes Summer Band Camp before fall season

Jordan Contreras plays his trumpet on the last day of Summer Band Camp with the Harlingen High School South band on Friday, Aug. 9, 2024. (Travis Whitehead | Valley Morning Star)

HARLINGEN — The “ra-ta-ta” of the drums cut across the parking lot with a sort of bold presence in the sun of the Friday morning.

It’s the last Friday of Summer Band Camp of the Harlingen High School South band and a prelude to the new season which begins Monday.

The mellophones and the xylophones and the vibraphones with their dreamy notes dripping beneath the ra-ta-ta of the drums add a sort of hypnotic quality to the moment. That hypnotic quality and the boldness of the drums are but two sides of the personality of this year’s show, “Byways.”

“It’s based on the lyrics of Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way,’” said Ronnie Rios, director of bands.

“We will bring life to the musical travels of humanity,” he said. “We have the powerful and exciting classical sounds of Hindemith to the beauty of the symphonic tones of Grainger.”

Paul Hindemith was a German and American composer. Percy Aldridge Grainger was an Australian-born composer who later immigrated to the United States.

Rios further explained that the work of Hindemith and Grainger were being incorporated this season with the “jazz sounds of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” super composed in the total sonic composite through the production.

“A woodwind ensemble, trombone solo, drum sets and a vocal solo contribute to the different layers of musical expression in the show,” he said.

Such varied styles explain very well the power of this complex and delightful and innovative work and the way it can move people on many different levels.

Back on the parking lot where the Hawk band concludes its last day of Summer Band Camp the sections — the saxophones, the flutes, the clarinets, the trumpets — move like shifting pieces of a geometry tuned and choreographed with precision and grace. The woodwinds roll up and down in a sort of dance, with smoothing crescendos and diminuendos and festive articulations of notes and melodies.

The musicians all seemed to enjoy their parts in this fine and refreshing piece.

Mayte Franco, 16, plays flute during practice with the Harlingen High School South Hawk band on Friday, Aug. 9, 2024. (Travis Whitehead | Valley Morning Star)

“My part, the flute always has the melody so it’s very melodic all the and time,” says Mayte Franco, 16, a junior.

“It has a lot of moving parts so it gets difficult, but it sounds very elegant,” she says.

Elegance is an apt description to this show and the different pieces of this show. The flags ripple and whirl in harmony to the brass and the woodwinds moving forward, bright flashes of bold green and spotless white dashing through the sunlight as if announcing the grand entry of some great and honored guest.

The students agree the practice has been going very well this final week before the new school year.

“Practice is going pretty smoothly today,” says Jordan Contreras, 17, trumpet player.

“We’ve gotten a lot of new stuff down today,” says Jordan, a senior. “We hit it pretty hard. The show is really good this year. It’s original. It’s something that I have never heard before, that a lot of people had never heard of either.”

It’s a new innovation of which perhaps no one has heard, but they will soon hear it, many times this season, as the Hawk band continues to practice and perfect its show their own way in the spirit of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.”

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