Green Valley High band to play at Carnegie Hall, Macy’s parade

By Erin Dostal

Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2010 | 2:10 a.m.

Green Valley High School music students will be trading turkey for the Big Apple during this week's Thanksgiving holiday break.

The school’s symphonic band and orchestra will perform Sunday at Carnegie Hall for the second time in four years, just days after the 140-member Green Valley High School Marching Band will march Thursday in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

“Both events are huge for us,” Director of Bands Diane Koutsulis said. “It’s hard to pick which one we’re looking forward to most on this trip.”

The 200 students and parents traveling across the country will take a red-eye flight tonight to New York City, Koutsulis said.

The trip – including food, plane tickets and a five-night hotel stay – will cost about $325,000 for everyone, Koutsulis said. Students’ parents and outside donations will fund the trip, she said.

Green Valley High is the first school in Clark County to perform in the parade. Koutsulis said she couldn’t reveal the song the band will perform, but added that it will have a “Vegas vibe.”

The orchestra and band will be performing a piano concertino and a piece called “Angels in the Architecture” by Frank Ticheli at Carnegie Hall, she said, among other pieces. The concertino will feature Kevin Wu, a Green Valley High School alum working on his master's degree in music at the University of Southern California.

This won’t be the first time the marching band has performed for a national crowd. In January 2009, the band traveled to Washington, D.C., to play at President Obama’s inauguration.

Last spring, the school’s jazz band played at the Birdland jazz club in New York, Koutsulis said.

While in New York, students will take advantage of some cultural opportunities, Koutsulis said. The students – who are staying at a hotel in midtown Manhattan – will visit Ground Zero, museums and will take a nighttime river cruise.

Some students will also be attending "Memphis the Musical" or seeing Dave Brubeck perform at the Blue Note jazz club.

Those cultural experiences are part of why traveling to perform is so important, Koutsulis said.

“I think it’s important for kids to see other parts of the world,” she said. “And I think New York City is a different part of the world from Las Vegas.”

Koutsulis said it’s also a reward for the students’ hard work. It gives them an opportunity to show outsiders that Las Vegas is more than just the Strip, she said.

“We want to show that something good is happening in Vegas,” she said. There are “really fine schools with really great students in them.”