Top-rated school band to host regional festival

Ramona High School’s band, directed by music teacher Zachary Christy, has been receiving top ratings this year and will be hosting a Symphonic Band and Orchestra Festival from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, March 27.

The festival, open to the public, will feature performances by 10 bands and orchestras from schools in the county, including the Ramona High Symphonic Band, in the high school’s Performing Arts Wing, 1401 Hanson Lane.

Admission is free and a different ensemble will play every half hour.

“It’s a good kind of a snapshot of music in San Diego,” said Christy.

The festival, he noted, is an adjudicated performance.

“You go and you play for a panel of judges,” he said. “They give you a rating based on your performance.”

At two festivals this month, March 5 at El Camino High School and March 18 at Mira Mesa High School, Ramona’s band earned a unanimous superior rating.

“That’s tough to get. One of the songs we actually got a perfect score,” said Christy.

That song, “American Elegy” by Frank Ticheli, will be performed by the band at Friday’s festival, he said.

This is Christy’s first year as the school’s band director and his first year teaching.

Being new and seeing the quality the student musicians are putting forward, Christy said: “When they work harder, it keeps me on my toes. So then I need to go home and do research to make sure I’m still challenging them and prepare to continue to teach them. They’ve gone way past my expectations. Way, way past what I ever thought they could do.”

Also under Christy’s direction, the Royal Alliance Marching Band and Color Guard, called Winterguard in the winter season, have done well.

Winterguard is competing in the highest division ever, he said. ”They came out of the gate and bumped up two divisions.”

The marching band has also worked hard, he noted.

“We set the parade record for highest parade score. Three different parades and took first place at each one.”

Christy said he’s been involved with band for as long as he can remember, with a focus on low brass and mostly playing the tuba. He particularly enjoys marching band.

The Los Angeles native, who previously performed with the Santa Clara Vanguard Drum and Bugle Corps, attended Point Loma Nazarene University with a major in music education. During college he worked with marching bands in the area, establishing a network of contacts, so he stayed in San Diego after graduating.

He did his student teaching at Rancho Bernardo High School. When a friend told him of a band director opening at Ramona High School, Christy thought it was the high school of the same name in Riverside County and did not discover otherwise until the night before his interview.

“So this one kind of was a pleasant surprise,” he said. “I had no idea Ramona was here before this year.”

He lives “down the hill,” a phrase he said his guitar class taught him.

Although he has experienced a “whole slew of challenges” being a band director and teacher, Christy said he is enjoying the job and finding his position a unique opportunity.

“I use music as a front to teach other things,” he said.

That includes teamwork, discipline and character building.

“It’s a lot of fun to work with talented kids,” he said. “All of them have talent, even ones that don’t think they do. To pick up an instrument and make any sort of sound is a talent.”

In addition to Ramona High, other school bands performing Friday include Mission Hills High School, Olive Peirce Middle School, Valley Center middle and high schools, and San Dieguito High School.

For more information about the band and the festival, see royalallianceband.org or Royal Alliance Marching Band on Facebook.