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Eudora High School band director Mac Knight is nothing less than impressed with the solid performance of the Eudora High School band at the State Solo and Small Ensemble Festival.

“They did really, really well – probably the best they’ve done in years,” Knight said. “We’ve never played that well, at least not since I’ve been here, so we’re making lots of progress from where the kids were from the beginning of this year to even the beginning of when I showed up here. We’ve made lots of improvement over the course of those years.”

EHS was one point from an overall 1, or superior, rating and three points away from getting straight ones from all of the judges.

It was a great way to end the year for band members and Knight, who has been with the Eudora school district since 2006.

The process of picking which songs the band will perform is a yearlong exercise.

“Pretty much from January on, I start looking at stuff for next year,” Knight said. “I look at what we have in our library and anything that happens to be coming out and make sure that it fits the group, but also that it’s quality music.”

But because he loses band members to graduation each year, he has to hedge his bets in some cases because he doesn’t know the talent level of incoming freshman.

“It takes a long time to try to figure out the options and then find out who’s in the ensemble. Then we can start to focus in on a few,” Knight said. “Sometimes we’ll sit down and play through about 10 of 15 pieces to pick between the ones they sound comfortable on and the ones that are a little bit more of a challenge.

“The one that is more challenging is the one that we usually will pick.”

Students also help pick pieces, as they did for the winter concert as well as last week’s Pops Concert.

Knight also must choose pieces with varying styles when it comes to festivals

“We have to show we can play slow and lyrical, and we have to show we can play fast and with technique,” he said.

This year, Knight will lose seniors Josh Blaisdell, who is a percussionist, and Whitney Box, who plays bass clarinet and tenor saxophone. Both students excelled at festivals throughout the year and were the first instrumental soloists to earn a 1 rating at the State level in more than 20 years.

But like a college coach who has lost good players to the NFL draft, Knight already is looking to the future to reload.

“We’re excited about next year,” he said. “Though we’re losing our seniors and we don’t want to see them go, we’re getting a new crop of freshman so it should be really good next year.”

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