Hampton High School Marching Band scores best-ever showing

“A Night to Dismember” was, if you’ll pardon the expression, a night to remember.

The Hampton High School Marching Band’s horror-themed show received a score 90.375 out of 100, good for fourth place among 17 sets of performers, at the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Marching Band Association Championships.

“That was exciting. We were not expecting that, at all,” band director Chad Himmler said about the Oct. 22 extravaganza at Norwin High School. “We had never placed higher, and we had never scored higher.”

Actually, the full title of Hampton’s presentation is “Senior Prom: A Night to Dismember,” with the performers simulating a disruptive zombie attack and apparently having a blast while doing so.

“Every year, we try to program a show that’s going to be relatable and entertaining for the audience, and not just the Saturday night competition audience, but also for the Friday night football audience,” Himmler said. “I will say that we worked extra hard to try to find something extra special this year, to let the kids have as much fun as possible. That was the priority.”

For 2021, the theme was “Thank You,” which he called a tribute to the men and women who have served our country.

“We did it as special as we could,” he said. “But that show was not, let’s say, for the students performing it. That show was for the community. This year, we flipped that around.”

Either way, they wowed ’em.

“The shows couldn’t be more different than one another,” Himmler said. “But the audiences really, it seemed like, appreciated what we’d done both years.”

So did the judges.

Going into the championship event, the band achieved first-place scores in competitions at Baldwin (78.55) and at Deer Lakes (85.1) high schools, with the latter representing a Hampton best prior to Norwin.

Along the way, audience members and judges heard a variety of styles and time periods when it came to the selection of “Senior Prom: A Night to Dismember” music.

Opening with Danny Elfman’s “Beetlejuice: Main Title” as a mood setter, the musicians switched to “Danse Macabre” by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) as a classical piece to which prom goers could dance.

Then came a leap into the 21st century with “Heads Will Roll” by New York City rock group Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs.

“I had never heard that song before,” Himmler said, but students in the band at Hampton Middle School sure know it: They overwhelmingly voted for the 2009 hit to be included in their pops concert.

He took the tune to the high school, reasoning that its presence in “A Night to Dismember” would serve the dual purpose of lending itself to the theme while helping to convince middle schoolers to continue their band participation once they reach ninth grade.

Befitting the prom theme, the “king” and “queen” — drum major Samantha Nicely and dance team co-captain Madison Slovick, respectively — exhibited their terpsichorean skills to “A Thousand Years” by Christina Perri and David Hodges, a song that also is featured in “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1,” a film that involves vampires.

Then came the convergence of prom goers and zombies, with Himmler describing what turned out to be the obvious song selection:

“Everyone on the design team thought, if this is what our show’s going to be, we cannot do this show and not do ‘Ballroom Blitz.’ That is a mandatory part of the show.”

And so the fast-paced 1970s hit for Sweet, composed by a couple of British chaps named Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn, accompanied a chaotic scene that closed with a reprise of “Heads Will Roll.”

“We had these huge yoga balls from a show we did four years ago,” Himmler said. “And so we painted the yoga balls and had them each look like a zombie head,” and indeed, they rolled around the turf at Knights Stadium.

Drum majors Kai Suyama and Brooks Brady, doing their best zombie imitations, helped lead the proceedings, and for a musical highlight, Enrique Marte took a couple of electric guitar solos in addition to playing vibraphone.

Working with Himmler were composer Chad Heiny with music arrangements, Reed Richardson with field formations, and color guard director Christina Nowak and dance team director Leighann Bacher with choreography.

“As a design team, we had so much fun planning this show,” Himmler said. “We started in-person design meetings the first week of January of the previous school year.”

That means generating ideas for next year’s show will start shortly. In the meantime, Himmler acknowledges the success of the 2022 participants.

“We are very happy for the kids. They worked really, really hard this year,” he said. “We just could not be more proud of them.”