Long Branch's Marching Band To Perform At All-Shore Festival

LONG BRANCH, NJ – The Long Branch High School marching band will be performing as part of the All-Shore Marching Band Festival on Wednesday evening at Shore Regional High School in West Long Branch.

The band will be performing alongside other marching bands from the area, including Ocean, Point Pleasant Beach, Monmouth Regional, Toms River South, Freehold, Toms River East, and Shore Regional.

The band will be performing its competitive field show, ESCAPE!, which includes the songs Hall of the Mountain King, Novus, and King Kong Finale at 6:15 p.m.

According to Robert Clark, the marching band's director, due to COVID protocols, only eight schools decided to participate in the outdoor festival.

There's also a virtual festival offered this year, where marching bands submitted recordings of their field shows from the beginning and the end of the season. Long Branch participated in the virtual festival last year as that was the only option.

"It was a different experience, but it was really interesting to compare and contrast the bands with each other and with their earlier performances," Clark said to Patch.

According to Clark, the pandemic has affected all aspects of school life, from classrooms to extracurricular activities, and marching bands were not exempt.

"Band enrollment and participation have been way down in Monmouth and Ocean Counties since the pandemic," Clark said to Patch.

"The shift back to live rehearsals, coupled with the challenges of teaching instrumental music remotely, have set the activity back dramatically. This also magnifies the need for strong Middle School Band programs in the Shore area that focus on instruction and pedagogy and not simply mandatory winter and spring performances. We are all looking forward to regrouping and rebuilding our programs as we emerge from the pandemic."

Despite the lower numbers of members, bands like Long Branch's have been putting on the best performances they can despite following specific protocols.

"We have all been following State recommendations for indoor rehearsals," Clark said to Patch.

"Currently, we are using instrument covers on wind instruments and a minimum of three-foot distancing between players. Students are masks when not actively playing. Percussionists remain masked all of the time while indoors. Outdoors, we are close to "normal" with attention paid to social distancing when performing in the stands at football games."