The Cullman Middle School Band’s Spring Concert is set for May 14, with a song list that is meant to represent the trials and triumphs that students have experienced during the past year.

Middle School Band Director Linda Bean spoke to the Cullman City School Board during Tuesday night’s meeting about the upcoming concert and detailed some of the changes that are going to be coming to the band for the next couple of years.

She said the Spring Concert will take place at 7 p.m. in the high school auditorium, and the students will be performing songs that represent the past year and the changes that have come about due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“What we’re going to do is tell our story of the year of the pandemic through the music,” she said.

She said the first song, “Blue,” has a clarinet solo that will represent the students being at home alone practicing their music before ending on a hopeful note. The second song, “Imperium,” features lots of different rhythms happening at the same time, but has one melody that rises above the rest, and that melody will represent the students’ perseverance through the year. The final song, a fanfare called “Invincible,” will represent the students having their triumphant return to the stage.

Bean also spoke about some of the changes that are coming to the middle school band next year due to the COVID-19 procedures that schools have been following this year.

Sixth-graders are usually brought over from the elementary schools for beginner band, but that was not possible this year because of the rules that have been in place, so next year’s beginner band will be made up of the seventh graders who were unable to take part this year, she said.

That change means the middle school’s advanced band will only include eight-graders, so it will be half the size that it usually is, she said.

“That’s going to change a lot of what we do,” she said.

By moving the beginner band to seventh grade, this year’s sixth-graders who were unable to take part in the band should be able to catch up to where they need to be by the end of the year, and they should be back on track to take part in the high school band after their eighth grade year, Bean said.

“It should not affect the high school as long as we’re able to catch them up like we think we can,” she said. “It’s the middle school where you’re going to notice the big change.”

While last year brought some new challenges to band members, that didn’t stop them from excelling at their chosen instruments, with 10 eight-graders selected to perform in the top high school symphonic band and five selected as first chair in the concert band, Bean said.

“We’re very tickled for our students and how hard they’ve worked this year,” she said. “I tell everyone that students have been the silver lining in the pandemic, because they just keep going.”