West Essex Band to Perform With Foster the People

These past few weeks has been surreal.  First, members of the West Essex Band got the chance to play with band "Action Item" at the Bamboozle Music Festival on May 20. This was an amazing experience. Band members got to rehearse at a sound studio, collobarate on the song "Marching Band", and then perform at the famed music festival with the up and coming Rutherford based band.  

The show was amazing. When the West Essex Marching Band came on, the crowd went crazy. You can watch a Youtube video of the performance here. This was an awesome experience for all the students involved.

Still feeling the rush from Bamboozle, I checked my phone the next night and saw I had 5 missed calls from Ryan Soroka. Ryan is a former student and West Essex band member who made the performance at Bamboozle possible. He was the mastermind who coordinated everything. Figuring he was calling just to talk about how well things went, I let the phone go to voice mail because we were in the middle of our dress rehearsal preparing for our Spring Concert in a couple days. It was one of those times, that I should have figured he called 5 times for a reason.  

At the end of the dress rehearsal, I called Ryan back and he let me know that people in the audience were so impressed that he was presented with another great performance opportunity. The Grammy-nominated band "Foster the People" wanted members of our band to play with them at a sold-out show at the Summer Stage in Central Park. The band that won the Billboard Award for Top Rock Song with "Pumped Up Kicks" wants our students to perform with them in front of thousands of fans.

Before I could announce anything to the kids, we had our concert to perform. The concert really well. The band has been working extremely hard all year and it showed on stage. The students performed very well and crowd seemed to enjoy all the songs.

The day after the concert, I got to tell some of the students about the great opportunit coming up. Everyone of them was excited for the chance to play with a headlining act. So, next Tuesday and Wednesday, we'll have 12 students that will have the chance of a lifetime performing on stage for thousands of screaming fans on Foster the People's new single, "Houdini."  

It's been a crazy month, but this will surely be an unforgettable way to end the month of amazing performances.  You can see a clip of the song "Houdini" here 

John Scozzaro

Band Director