The Rainbow Invitational is a marching band festival that happens every year. It is a time where many high school bands get to showcase their accomplishments, music, and the skills that they built up in the school year. The event is non-competitive, being a setting where students get to watch other schools perform while getting feedback for their own performance from the UH Bands or even nationally-renowned judges. The UH Rainbow Warrior Marching Band concludes the festival with a special performance for the students.
In the band, I was part of the Trumpet section which had about 20-30 members. Even though I was a very small fraction of the entire marching band, and even within my own section, if I was not there, you would see a “hole” during the performance which can get the attention of spectators and lessen the “Wow!” factor of the visuals. With that being said, my fellow band members and I, along with the Drum Majors and all the people working in the background all worked hard leading up to the 2019 Rainbow Invitational.
The difference between the Rainbow show and the shows that the band does at the Football games is that the Rainbow show is longer and is more difficult in both drill and music, and because of this, I learned a lot of things leading up to the festival. To start, I was not even playing Trumpet for very long during this. I had music experience since I played a different instrument from middle school to high school, but at the time of the show, I only had about 1.5 years of experience on Trumpet, and in my opinion, that is not much when playing and marching at this level. Along with improving my trumpet skills, I also learned how to march actual shows and read drill charts. I say this is significant because my high school did not do marching shows while a lot of the other high schools did. In the end, learning how to play a new instrument and do marching shows was a very challenging, but extremely fun endeavor that taught me that hard work will reap rewards, and will be an experience that I will remember for a very long time.