Projected on a screen at the front of the Coppell High School Band Hall on Friday afternoon was a message: “There’s beauty in simplicity.” 

Minutes later, as lights dimmed and the gathered crowd of students, teachers and parents drew to a hush, the band directors would announce the varsity show for the fall 2023 marching season,“Major Scale.” 

“I came up with this idea of being able to showcase scale, which musically is the basis of everything we do, as well as tie it into visual scale,” Color Guard director Matthew Rummel said. “The whole concept is about playing with visual and musical scale back and forth and trying to flip the paradigm of what we’re accustomed to on its head. At any given point you’re listening to something and the background of what you’re hearing is some sort of scalar production. You’ll get hit with the concept on every level, basically.”

“Major Scale” will be arranged by Brian George, the music arranger for the Boston Crusaders Drum and Bugle Corps, as well as Coppell percussion instructors Doug Bush and Patricia Islas. The show will include musical features by “Lost it to Trying” by Son Lux, “Blue Rondo à la Turk” by Dave Brubeck, “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen, “First Circle” by Pat Metheny and “Waloyo Yamoni” by Christopher Tin. 

“With all of this, it was about creating the right mood and the right feel and really not wanting to feel stuffy,” Rummel said. “We spent a lot of time on Beethoven last year, and this year, we wanted to go fresher and feel a bit more fun in our approach while still offering some great opportunities for technical virtuosity. You’ll see musical scale and visual scale––ensemble moments against one visual performer, big brass moments against one tiny little piccolo.”

“Archetype,” the 2022 varsity show, focused on intellectualism and Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 7,” and intended to send a message of love, care and musicianship. Performers are hopeful “Major Scale” will do the same.

“I really want this show to encapsulate our love and passion for music and the joy it brings us,” junior mellophone section leader Ansh Lala said.

The title and concept of the show, according to head band director Kim Shuttlesworth, were partly inspired by a lyric from “Hallelujah”: “The minor falls, the major lifts.”

“I wanted to make sure that our concept this year was a little less concrete, because I think the audience/judges that don’t remember English class probably had a hard time wrapping their minds around what an archetype was,” Rummel said. “We wanted to make sure that we could appeal to anybody in any walk of life, in any shape or form.”

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