Education & Youth | Arts & Culture | New Haven Public Schools | Wilbur Cross High School | Arts & Anti-racism
Top: Dontae James, who is one of this year's drum majors. Bottom: The drumline brings it. Lucy Gellman Photos.
The Marching Governors were off. At the far left of the formation, sophomore Marai Vargas took a deep breath, working through a solo in her head. Her trumpet, cold to the touch, was steady and still in her hands for a moment. Then everything was in motion: as she turned on her heel, the first bright notes of John McAllister’s “Epic Stadium” rang out over the field. Beneath a low-hanging sky, Eric Teichman never took his eyes off the musicians.
“Time your approach! Time your approach!” he cried, a clipboard balanced in one hand. Drum majors Dontae James and Emmy Rosario did a sort of cold waddle-march forward, moving at a clip as they balanced their whistles in their teeth. “Don’t let the tempo drag!”
It’s just one of the ways that the Marching Governors—that’s the Wilbur Cross High School marching band—has bounced back three years after returning to the classroom and to the football field. As they prepared for the 39th annual Elm City Bowl against James Hillhouse High School on Thursday, they worked to grow their repertoire, add fancy footwork, and fold in harder pieces.
So when it was announced that they wouldn't actually be playing in the game—there are torrential rains expected, which are not kind to instruments—they celebrated something much bigger instead. For many of them, it marks the culmination of a triumphant season, in which young musicians are more confident and more unified than they’ve been in years.
Eric Teichman, for whom students had effusive praise throughout a cold and almost-damp practice.
“We’re in a totally different place right now,” said Teichman, who began his tenure as band director in 2019. “We have such nice momentum. Since coming back from Covid, we’ve just been developing consistency and continuity in what we’re doing. With students returning each year, we’ve been able to do more challenging and more interesting and more fun material.”
That transformation has taken a full three years, during which the school has gained a new principal, tried out new musical collaborations across the district, dealt with mold problems in the band room, and tried to shrug off the threat of impending rain on the city’s biggest game of the year. In fall 2021, Teichman and the band started the season in triage mode, more focused on rebuilding than anything else. Students, many of whom have now graduated, were dealing with stalled social, emotional, and academic growth. Many had stopped practicing during Covid, and were just getting back to the basics.
Teichman was patient. For a year, students focused on learning how to play together again. As one school year turned into another, they took on more performances, from school concerts and pep rallies to citywide parades that had the streets dancing along with them. As they did, Teichman started to see a bigger shift: students sounded better, but they were also excited to be back in space with each other after a year of isolation.
Top: Endris Rivera, Justin Nopal-Perez, and Julio Hernandez. Bottom: Marai Vargas leads the trumpets.
They also learned to take care of each other in the process. On a recent game day, seniors Irvin Simon and Justin Nopal-Perez went to WalMart and bought handwarmers and blankets for all their peers. When they weren’t playing, students spent the game sitting together in the bleachers, huddled two or three under a blanket as they cheered on the Governors. Teichman estimated that they often make up two-thirds of attendees.
"The dynamic of the group has just become so tightly knit,” he said (Teichman grew up playing tenor sax in the marching band, and sees that spark in some of his students). “They are so friendly and fun, playful with each other. These rehearsals have taken on a lot more enjoyable atmosphere. Students seem to enjoy being around each other and making music."
Last Friday, that enthusiasm was in full force as members of the band gathered outside Wilbur Cross, some shivering in a blustery, late-season cold that had held off for most of the fall. Many pulled up their hoodies and too-thin jackets and eyed the clouds that were rolling in. Somewhere in the knot of bodies, sax player Ernesto Lugo remembered that he had a pair of gloves and slipped them on.
Two sousaphones floated over the group, their bell-shaped mouths bobbing through the air like parade day floats. Around them, the sound of chatter ebbed and flowed: set lists, homecoming plans, adolescent quibbles with the bone-crackling cold. James and Rosario, who are sharing the position of drum major this year, hustled to the front of the line.
Emmy Rosario, who attends Cross and ACES Educational Center for the Arts. He plans to continue studying music in college.
A saxophone player in the school’s regular and jazz bands—the latter of which he basically teaches, said Teichman—James said he’s both honored to be drum major and still navigating how strange it feels not to be playing among his classmates. The saxophone section has always been his home. And yet, the position of drum major suits him: he's gentle with his classmates until he needs to be strict, and then gets into a zone.
Rosario, who is a senior this year, was less ambivalent: he’s wanted to be drum major since watching Jordan Wabahati do it three years ago, when he was just an underclassman and Wabahati was a senior. Now that Rosario's a senior at Cross and ACES Educational Center for the Arts (where James is also a student), he’s excited to take up the mantle. After this year, he plans to pursue music in college.
"Last year, I was playing trumpet for marching band, I was playing trumpet one, and it was a really hard role because I'm not originally a trumpet player,” he said. “It tested my range and my endurance and a lot of my leadership skills. But being a drum major, you gotta be vulnerable all the time."
Together and apart, both roles have taught him to lead in different ways, he added. When he’s with the band, “I just wanna have fun. It’s gonna be my last Elm City Bowl. It’s been a really special tradition the last four years, and it’s really cool how the band has grown in many different ways since I’ve been here.”
As the temperature dropped and the sky darkened Friday, musicians ran their set and choreography over and over again, careful to thread the needle just right as they walked and played at the center of the field (if they don’t, band practice can become surprisingly dangerous: there is an entire subreddit dedicated to marching band accidents like human collisions). As James and Rosario lifted twin whistles, musicians stood at attention, ready to play.
“And hut!” Rosario called out. Five short bursts of the whistle followed. “Horns up!”
Musicians steadied their drumsticks and mouthpieces and reeds, some swinging at the hips in anticipation. They turned to Cabello's "My Oh My," the pages small and shiny as they hung above their instruments. They say he likes a good time, horns bellowed, and it felt like a party. My oh my! woodwinds responded, and it was convincing enough to feel a little scandalous. Beneath them, the drums rumbled and thrummed.
On the field, it became almost impossible to stay still. Instruments lifted up the melody, dancing with each other between the lyrics. Tuba growled, making the brass sing. The flutes trilled a quick, sweet agreement.
Then just as quickly, Teichman raised his hands to stop the group. He narrowed his eyes for a split second, figuring out where the sound had lagged first. Something seemed too stretched out, like Cabello was singing with a wad of taffy in her mouth.
"It shouldn't matter that it's cold," he said. "It's the end of November in New England. We have to keep the energy and the enthusiasm up!"
The band took it from the top. This time, the end of "My Oh My" went off without a hitch, and the field crackled with a momentary excitement. “Look alive!” Teichman called out through a megaphone, and musicians seemed to straighten up.
Again, Rosario’s whistle pierced the air, and musicians pivoted, turning on their heels as they began to walk towards both sides of the field. They turned again, making a slow beeline for each other until they were a moving, mellifluous X shape. With a gust of wind at their backs, Rosario and James marched forward, their steps short and orderly.
“You gotta halt,” Teichman said to one student. And to another, “Look where you’re going!”
Vargas, who was inspired by her older brother.
Seconds later, students had launched into Smash Mouth’s “All Star,” Teichman slipping orders in between notes. Matt Chasen, a band teacher at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School who helps conduct the group, walked slowly across the astroturf. “Nice and strong!” he exclaimed. From the lefthand side of the formation, Vargas broke away from the group and walked forward, ready for her solo.
As drums played her in, she let out a string of buttery-smooth notes, her hands steady even in the cold. She later said that she draws inspiration from her brother Okman, a former drum major who graduated from Cross in June of this year. After taking an involuntary break during the pandemic ("it was too much people in the house," and she struggled to rehearse, she said), she is excited to be in band this year.
“Yes Marai!” Chasen called out over the wind. It would be the first of nearly 10 times that students ran the full routine. For Vargas, who has played the trumpet since her fifth grade year at John C. Daniels School—and attended the Elm City Bowl for years to support her brother—it was a step forward in her own career as a young musician.
"I'm grateful to have a solo, but also at the same time it's a big responsibility, because I'm playing in front of a lot of people,” she said in an interview after rehearsal. “I hope I don't mess up."
Top: Marai Vargas, Jean Guerrero and Jeremy Yanza. "It's the people who make it fun," said Guerrero, who is a senior. He added that Teichman has made it feel like a home. Bottom: Zara Baden-Eversman, who is a senior. Her younger sister Iris, a freshman at the school, is also part of the band.
She didn't have to worry. Back on the field, Teichman was cold but beaming. "I love what I just heard," he said. "This is what we've been working for. Now give me two more like this."
Not all of the musical magic happens during students’ main performance, Teichman added after rehearsal as students warmed their hands in the band room. When Cross’ musicians are in the stands, it’s their job to lift morale—a near-Sysyphean task given the school’s athletic track record this year. This season, they’ve leaned into more challenging pieces, like Gloria Estefan’s “Let’s Get Loud,” Seatbelts’ “Tank!” and Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone.”
"The more the students buy into what we're doing as a group and apply themselves and commit to making this a fun and meaningful experience, that is going to open up more possibilities for us," he said.