When the calendar turns to March, many students start to look toward spring break. While the season will change, there won’t be a break for the busy Highland Band.

The band will leave school on Friday, March 18th and return on Thursday the 24th to travel to Walt Disney World in Orlando with other Highland fine arts students. While there, the band will participate in a session with a Disney instructor to learn music used in an iconic movie scene that they will have the chance to perform. Highland band director Andrew McDonald talked about the experience with KCII News, “Disney World does an awesome thing with schools that show up where, they give you some music to a scene from a Disney movie, and you either sing it or play it on instruments and then they swap out the original movie audio with your band or choir’s performance. I did the same thing when I was in high school. The scene that we got was the stampede from ‘The Lion King’. They had us play the background music to that scene and then at the end of it you get a DVD with the original film video and that high school’s audio.”

Upon their return to Iowa, several members of the ensemble will take part in the Southeast Iowa Superconference Honor Band at Winfield-Mt. Union High School on March 24th. Later in the spring, McDonald invites friends and family of band members to the seventh through 12th grade Highland band solo festival March 31st, and the May, 9th concert for sixth through 12th grade concert and jazz bands.