Colton, CA—On March 4, 2025, Colton Joint Unified held their district band festival in the Ken Hubbs Gym at Colton High, where over 500 students performed together.
The District Band festival is an event where each school from the district has shared performances together that are conducted by a different band director.
Colton High’s Principal John Abbott said, “I think that the district band festival is an amazing opportunity for all of our band students to come together and play the music that they love. Their dedication and commitment to the band and their ability to do it well is amazing, so I always enjoy it.”
The high school bands performed the songs “Among the Clouds” and “Fate of the Gods” which were conducted by Bloomington High’s Band Director Victor Torres and Colton High’s Band Director Aron Campbell.
Campbell said, “You can tell, just between even last year to this year, the level of musicianship with the students that are here at Colton has increased.” he continued with explaining the amount of growth Colton’s students have had, “If we’re looking at it like divisions, they’ve gone up two instead of what normally takes three to five years, they’ve done it in one. So it’s been a heck of an experience. Love working with the group, obviously. And I mean, I hope the kids like working with me.”
The middle schools performed “Kilauea” and “Red Thunder”, conducted by Olivia Vara and Daniel Ridder. While the elementary bands performed “Simple Gifts” and “Batter Up,” conducted by Jill Ivy and Vanessa Duckworth.
The second performance that the elementary schools performed titled “Batter Up” was a skit where the narrator and conductor Vanessa Duckworth acted as a baseball announcer and the elementary teachers acted as hitters.
The skit garnered the most hype as the students would play the song and then proceed to raise their instruments when a “hitter” went up to bat.
Colton High euphonium player Mark Rodriguez said, “It was really cool, it was really hot inside though, but I thought we did really really good, I thought everyone played really good and the baseball bit was funny.”
As good as the bands played, there was one inconvenience throughout the festival . . . Hubbs gym had limited seating, requiring families to cram inside with little room to move or see.
Fortunately Colton High’s band and staff were on top of things and brought out foldable chairs for more families to sit on; however, there were still too many attendees and not everyone was provided a seat.
Abbott said, “The most people we’ve had show up to a district band Festival at Colton High School. So that was amazing, but it’s going to cause us to get back to the drawing board and make sure that everyone has a good seat to be able to enjoy the show. We do feel bad that many families couldn’t quite enjoy the experience because there was a lack of seating.”
