No place like New York: LHS seniors reflect on trip to NYC

Oct. 24—The bus rolled out after school on Friday, Oct. 13, filled with 45 Logansport High School band members and their chaperones.

Twelve hours later they were in New York City.

It's a biannual tradition. Every two years, the band journeys to either Florida or New York. Ned Boyd, director of bands at Logansport High School, called the trips a reward for the students' hard work.

Last week was their first trip to New York since 2016 due to the COVID pandemic. They stopped in New Jersey to watch the sun rise on the way in.

"These kids in the marching band, we started July 5," said Boyd. "All of July, all of August, all of September and sometimes into October. It's a long season."

For many of the students, it was their first ever trip to the Big Apple.

"All of our kids are performers," Boyd said. "We do music and we want to see and hear all of that and there's just no place like New York."

New York state of mind

Senior alto-saxaphonist Madison Lupke called the experience amazing. Libby Evans, also a senior who plays the trumpet, called it phenomenal.

"For me it was really eye opening," said senior Allison Conrad, who plays the flute. "It's so diverse there. You will be walking along the street and hear Portuguese, Italian, Russian—all these different languages. It was crazy because in Logansport you hear a few languages or see a few people who don't look like you but when you go to New York it's just so many different people."

"It's a window into the entire world in one city," said senior Kelsey Thomas, a percussionist.

Thomas visited New York six years ago with the Logansport Children's Choir. She said she better appreciated the trip with her bandmates.

"I have a better appreciation for the city because I'm older and I understand how much effort goes into the architecture in the city and the shows that we see, just how one of a kind and top tier it really is," she said.

The first day included a trip to Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick's Cathedral and Radio Center Music Hall. The trip also included a Broadway performance of "Wicked."

"I always wanted to see a show on Broadway," Lupke said. "I was walking into it like 'oh yeah, it's a Broadway show. It's gonna be really fun.' I walked out and I remember thinking 'that's crazy' over and over because not only the scenes but the costumes, the props, the characters. They were all just out of the world."

"I liked the first day when we got there a couple of hours early and we just walked around the city seeing a bunch of things without having a particular destination," Conrad said. "And we went into Central Park for a bit. That was my favorite part—all this green inside the big city."

Honoring 9/11

For Thomas, going to New York was her second big trip of 2023. Over the summer she toured Europe with the Indiana Ambassadors of Music.

Both trips gave her the opportunity to experience somber moments in history. In Germany this past summer she saw the Dachau concentration camp where the Nazis killed over 32,000 prisoners during the Holocaust.

In New York, it was the National 9/11 Memorial & Museum.

While both were sad experiences, Thomas said the concentration camp and the 9/11 museum were very different due to the messages that they conveyed.

She felt that Germany used their concentration camp memorial to atone but at the 9/11 museum, it felt like a celebration of togetherness and overcoming a horrible event.

"It was very, very sad but also gave you hope that no matter what our country goes through we have a sense of togetherness and we can pull through anything," she said.

Boyd said that the oldest student on the trip was born in 2005. Taking the band members into the museum was an interesting experience, he said, comparing their lack of knowledge about 9/11 as similar to his knowledge of Pearl Harbor as a child.

"I remember in elementary school, our music teacher, she always skipped (teaching music on 9/11)," Lupke said. "She always had us watch videos about 9/11 and then write a memorial piece and turn it in. Seeing this old broken fire truck smashed by a pillar of the building, you just stand there and reflect and think. And there was the last pillar which was signed by the different fire troops and it was crazy to see the messages and the pictures. You tear up when you see it."

"I had never really thought about it until I went to the museum because it never felt like it affected me," Evans said. "I was born after it all the way in Indiana but I went there and it made it more real and put it in perspective."

Blue Man Group

Their last night in New York was spent with the Blue Man Group.

Thomas said by the time the show arrived she was so burned out and had little expectation going into the performance. It turned out to be her favorite event of the tour.

"I'm a percussionist and seeing Blue Man Group, it was really a different side of the profession," she said. "I've seen orchestral performances but it was just completely different. It was really, really innovative and really, really entertaining. It was kind of scary at points."

Thomas said the Blue Man Group stares at their audience the entire performance and includes a lot of loud noises and flashing lights. The students described the performance as very in your face.

"They got into Mr. Boyd's face and it was the funniest thing I have ever seen," Evans laughed.

Boyd described one member of the group climbing over the audience during the performance.

"The guy crawled right over the top of me," he said. "He put his hand on my head as he was going. He put this foot on the armrest and had his hand on my head as he was crawling. It was wild."

The students had front row seats and when they arrived, they found ponchos waiting for them in their seats.

Thomas recalled thinking 'I don't know what these are for.' She soon found out.

During one bit in the show, the Blue Man Group ate Twinkies. They then sprayed the digested treats onto the audience from a hole in their chests.

"It ended up being banana, but it would end up being spit out into the audience," Thomas said. "But yeah, I got dried banana all over me."

Not done yet

Evans said she couldn't think of a better group of people to spend the trip with.

They've been together for seven years. Marching band is over but there's still basketball games and concerts. Their next performance is Wednesday, Oct. 25, at the Logansport Intermediate School. The show is part of a recruitment drive for the fifth graders who will take over the vacancies that Evans, Thomas, Lupke and Conrad leave when they graduate next spring.

"It's definitely emotional," Evans said. "We've all played together since we were in sixth grade. We've grown up together. It's very emotional to know that it is my last year."

"I remember homecoming night and that was our last game," Lupke said, tears forming in her eyes. "I remember thinking 'that's the last time I'm going to be on the field.'"

"They work so hard," Boyd said. "It's not easy. The camaraderie that happens and the connections that they make, you can see it. But we aren't done yet."