Colony senior secures national drum corps slot

PALMER — Colony High School senior Thomas Soto is taking his marching band skills to the next level with the Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps.

Soto has been involved in music programs since he was in fourth grade, but it wasn’t until he entered high school that he discovered drum corps.

At the end of band camp every summer, Colony High School band teacher Jamin Burton treats his students to an hours-long party of eating snack food and watching Drum Corps International footage. The international corps consists of 22 World Class teams and 25 Open Class teams, all of which have the potential to win national and international competitions.

Soto has performed in the Colony Jazz, Symphonic and Marching Bands, as well as in various small groups for the state Solo and Ensemble Music Festivals. But never before had he seen something quite like drum corps.

“I had no perspective,” Soto said.

Living in Alaska, he said, Soto had no idea such a sport — yes, sport — existed until Burton clued him in to the drum corps “culture.”

The main differences between drum corps and marching band involve the instruments used, performance goals and amount of competition. Drum corps do not include woodwinds, the choreography is more geared toward telling a story, and the groups compete more than perform, as marching bands would during football games.

For musicians without stationary instruments (like the marimba, for example), the movements required are also much faster, span more of the field, and are “more expressive,” Soto said.

And then there’s all that marching, of course.

Oh, and did anyone mention dancing?

“When I auditioned for the A Corps, over half of our visual stuff was ballet moves,” Soto said.

There have also been electronic additions to some of the performances, he said, to enhance visual enjoyment by the audience.

“It’s evolved so much over the years,” Soto said.

As have his skills. Soto took up drama early on in high school, and last year combined his fine arts interests by writing all the music for Colony’s production of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” He also played the character Gonzalo in the show.

“He brought it in for suggestions, and I basically just listened and (told him) what I thought was working,” Burton said, of Soto’s composition.

And that’s been their student-teacher relationship from the beginning.

“He’s been constantly asking me how to get better since I met him,” Burton said.

Although Soto did not make the Blue Devils A Corps — a World Class team — he did take a drum corps staff member’s advice and audition for the B Corps.

Soto soundly made the cut. Burton compared it to being drafted for minor league baseball.

“It’s a huge accomplishment for him,” Burton said.

But getting his foot in the door at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Burton said, might be even bigger.

For his audition, Soto compiled all the music he wrote for The Tempest in one arrangement for trombone.

“It was a big hit with the department,” Burton said. “I think it’s one of the main things that got him into that school.”

So although Soto won’t be playing trombone (his main instrument) with the corps this summer — they gave him a euphonium, which is similar to a baritone and hasn’t been too difficult for Soto to pick up, since the mouthpiece is the same size as the trombone and the music is the same — he will be jumping into the Technical and Applied Composition program at one of the top music schools in the country.

“I’m really excited, it’s incredible that I get to do this,” Soto said.

Before he moves to California, catch Soto onstage at Colony High in “The Bully Plays,” a show of nine one-act, senior-directed plays about bullies and the bullied. Opening night is April 24, at 7 p.m. Tickets can be purchased online at seatyourself.biz/colony or in person on the night of the show.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.