One of these Austin area educators is my good friend Cathy Benford. Cathy is one of the assistants at Stony Point H.S. in the Round Rock area. I’ve known Cathy for about 8 years now, and she’s always been very reliable in being a good listener, and helping me make personal and professional decisions. For years, I’ve been trying to get her to convince the higher-ups (i.e., Brian Sedatole) to hire the Montoya brothers to design her show. For a while she always hid behind the old “don’t want to mix friendships with business” excuse. (Personally, I think she just didn’t trust that we could design a good enough product. At the time, we were both relatively new to the game.) More recently, she’d been mentioning our names to the staff and it looked like there might be a possibility for us to work together in a professional manner.

The stars seemed to align last December at the Midwest Conference in Chicago, when Daniel, Cathy and myself decided to grab dinner at one of our favorite hidden gems, the “11” City Diner. Over a delicious open-faced turkey sandwich, Cathy told us that her director was considering doing a show using the music of the band Journey. (Yes, THAT Journey.) Daniel was instantly thrilled, as he’s a huge fan of Journey, and most things 80s. I was also intrigued – being a huge fan of anything that’s not your typical competitive marching band show. Things played out pretty quickly in the ensuing weeks, and Daniel and I were hired to design Stony Point’s 2009 show.

One of the big fears in designing this show was that it wouldn’t be taken seriously, on a competitive level. We were afraid that some in the judging community would just view it as a “pop” or “half-time” style show. We wanted to make sure that the show was designed to be rewarded for a high level of demand, and depth of design. It was decided early on, that the music of Journey would have to be mixed with music of a symphonic nature…something that would be considered “legit” music. Many different works were considered. At one point the music of Saint-Saens and/or Rachmaninoff seemed to be the direction we were heading.

But one day I was driving to get lunch at Panera. (Don’t ask me why I remember that…just do!) And I started thinking about the show itself, and how the majority of our music would be by Journey. It hit me that if one source of music would be a “journey”, then the other source should be a place or destination of some sort. Dvorak’s New World Symphony seemed appropriate, and the rest of the team agreed. Daniel worked his magic, and the result is “Journey through the New World”. This show is in 3 parts, and combines the following: 1.) the first movement of New World and Separate Ways; 2.) the second movement of New World, and Faithfully; 3.) the fourth movement of New World and Don’t Stop Believin’.

Visually, the show it pretty straight forward – as in this production, the music takes precedence. However, there is a running theme of the dance team making their way across the field. The show begins with the band forming a pathway for the dancers to travel. As they pass sections of the band, the pathway disappears, and kicks off the Separate Ways portion of the show. The second production begins with the band in a full-block set which gradually turns into the pathway formation again. As the woodwinds play the Largo melody by Dvorak, the brass creates another pathway for the dance team to move to the center of the field, and become the visual focus. The movement closes with 50 dancers on the field as the band sets up a stage for the classic “power-ballad” moment. The closer takes the band through its own journey of fast paced drill, quick changes in mood, and finally the “marquee” set as the show comes to its climax during Don’t Stop Believin’. As the show wraps up, the band forms the pathway one last time, to let the dancers complete their journey to the other side.

A video of “Journey through the New World” can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCgG6tPNNVo

It was a blast designing this show for Stony Point. As I got to tell the members at one of their football games, it’s refreshing to know that a show can be appealing to both a “football” audience, while remaining competitive to the judges. The show has a certain level of depth and sophistication, which is likely lost on many of the viewers – but that’s okay, because the majority of the people who saw this show loved it, and appreciated the use of familiar melodies and communication with the audience. What more could you ask for?!?