Gadsden band invited to Rome parade
SAN LUIS, Ariz. — A San Luis student marching band’s talent has earned it its third invitation to perform in a holiday parade in a European city, this time the 2019 New Years Day parade in Rome.
Bob Bone, executive director for the parade, recently traveled to San Luis to deliver the formal invitation to Martin Peralta Jr., director of the Gadsden Elementary School District’s band, and to district Superintendent Raymond Aguilera.
The quality of the band’s performance in the 2013 New Year’s parade in London and then in the Cabalgata de los Reyes holiday parade in Madrid in January 2016 weighed heavily in the decision by the organizing committee for the Rome event
to extend the invitation to the San Luis student musicians, Bone said.
“We are inviting them because they are absolutely fantastic,” Bone said. “We didn’t have to think much about it; we decided we had to invite them to Rome.”
Consisting of student musicians and cheerleaders from junior high middle schools in the Gadsden district, the band will be among eight marching groups from around the United States and about 20 more from around Europe marching in the 2-mile-long parade that begins and ends in Rome’s Piazza del Popolo.
Part of a celebration that takes place over several days, the parade is seen by more than 120,000 spectators plus more than 1 million TV viewers, Bone said. Prior to the parade, the San Luis band members are expected to present several public performances in plazas around Rome and in nearby Italian city of Frascati.
“This presents an opportunity for the community (of San Luis) to be represented at an international level, and for the growth of the students, through the maturity they gain by traveling and visiting a country where conditions are different,” said Martin Peralta Sr., who serves as co-director of the band with his son.
“Each time that the kids come back from a presentation like this, they return with enormous maturity and with a mindset that they can achieve things if they work and if they believe in their efforts and in themselves,” he added.
Having a little more than a year to prepare for the performance, the Gadsden band will prepare a varied musical repertoire, including the band’s popular interpretation of the Mexican song “Cielito Lindo,” Peralta said.
In accepting the invitation to Rome, each band member and his or her family assumes the task of raising the funds needed to cover travel costs, which are expected to exceed $3,250 per member making the trip.
Marta De La Torre, president of a group of parents of band members, said fundraising activities are already taking place in preparation for the trip.
“The next one is a doughnut sale in the community,” she said. “Also we will be selling chocolate, and we will do other types of activities, like knocking on doors to see who can give us donations.”
De La Torre added: “We believe in the kids, in the youths. This is something that will stay with them at the most basic level, something they are not accustomed to. It is opening the minds of the kids to what they can accomplish if they commit themselves.”