Jefferson City High School's Marching Jay Band will take audiences through golden gates this year, into a two-high school future that in some ways is uncertain for the program but remains built upon the foundation laid by its band director, Brett Myers.
Myers said this year's show is called "Golden Gates."
A golden-painted regal gate with a little sparkle to it stood on the field of Adkins Stadium in front of the color guard as they practiced Thursday with the band at their summer camp.
"We'll have 15 of those (gates) on the field," Myers explained. In the back, the performance will have 12-foot columns with arches.
The music includes American composer Frank Ticheli's "Angels in the Architecture," which is "the actual, traditional doxology, just with a little twist on it. It's got a little Charles Ives in it," Myers said, referencing another American modernist composer.
The set will then lead into Mozart's "Lacrimosa," then into Josh Groban's "You Raise Me Up." Italian composer Respighi's "Church Windows" comes next, "and then we do a recap of the Josh Groban again," Myers said.
The theme means whatever people want it to.
"Some people have a faith-based meaning to it. Some people, they just say it's a fun show, it's fun music," Myers said. "But we're not putting any stated meaning to it."
The roughly 175 students enrolled in the Marching Jay Band will provide the sonic art for people in the audience to discern.
"One of the goals we had set for this year, we're already seeing it, and that's just everybody's working so well together," Myers said.
He said the Marching Jay Band will hit the same competitions as last year.
"We're going to Blue Springs at the end of September, which is a smaller Bands of America-style festival," he said. Big bands from schools as far away as St. Louis and Kansas, which often compete at higher levels, will be there.
It's a "feet-to-the-fire kind of festival" for the Jay Band's members, he said.
Other competitions will be at the University of Missouri in Columbia, St. Louis and Atlanta at the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium set to open this year.
Last year, Myers was interested in taking the band to an event like Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade or the Rose Bowl. "We're still going through that," he said. "I've done the application process. We need to still do some videos and some letters of recommendation."
The successful passage of the district's bond issue to fund two high schools has put a wrinkle in those plans.
"When we actually split the schools, we're not going to have 175 kids marching. We're going to have half of that. They're not going to put a band that size in the Macy's parade. So we're kind of holding off, seeing how that works itself out, and see where we can go from that," Myers said.
He hasn't asked if event organizers would let the only two high schools from the same and only school district in the same city march together. "We could always find out," he said, noting the two high schools will be treated as two separate entities for competition purposes.
"We'll have to follow what MSHSAA says we have to do," he said. "We may not be able to do this level of competition from a marching band standpoint after a couple of years, at least not for a while, because we have to build up both programs and get them to those levels," he said.
Ideally, once the new high school has four grade levels in it, each school's marching band would have about 100 students to start off, he added.
However for Myers, success isn't only driven by trophies.
"Judge how the band did by trophies, well, then you would think we did awful," he said of last year. "Judge the band by the curriculum, pedagogy, the goal-setting, the expectations that we met - the kids were in first place with us all year long.
"We're trying to build a culture that wasn't trophy-driven or win-driven but more (about) intrinsic motivation, understanding hard work and what comes out of that, being team-oriented, loving everybody."
That doesn't mean competition isn't on the Jays' minds, though.
Myers said the band made finals and placed well against tough competitors at competitions at Blue Springs and MU last year, and in St. Louis, they achieved a higher score in a tougher division against tougher competition than the year before.
"In the end, when we look back on it, we're extremely happy with their progress because we feel that that pushed (students) forward."
For the coming year, "our goal is to make finals at one or both of the (Band of America) competitions we're going to. We want the kids to meet their own personal expectations. We want them to meet our expectations. We want them to have fun while they're doing it, a sense of pride."
Senior flutist Kristen Wilbers, 17, reiterated she and a group of fellow seniors want to make finals.
Senior center snare drummer Payton Bryan, 17, said competition can be challenging, particularly as a section leader, but he welcomes those challenges.
"Live life to the fullest" is the advice freshman flutist Gjorden Washington, 14, gave to students considering joining band in the future.