Dance & Aux Forum

After reading some of the recent threads, I have to correct a lot of misinformed people. My name is Reginald Washington and I am the band director at Westbury HS!!!!! I also serve as one of the FOUR directors of Sensational Sounds!! I am speaking for MYSELF and what I know about Sensational Sounds!!!! NOT ONE STAFF member from SS has made a negative, or derogatory comment about GHASB!!! WE COULD, but we haven’t!!! Let’s get some things straight…First of all, SS is NOT AN ALL-STAR BAND!!!!! We don't claim to be. To be an "All-Star" group there should be some criterion for anyone trying to be apart. Some type of audition should be in place!!! There are only two groups of bands that exist on that level...College or University bands and DCI groups!!! That's obviously not the case with ANY of these groups, so we chose as a staff to NOT use that term!!!! This group was actually started as the Southwest All-Star Band by Ronald Thornton, Sr. It was made up of Willowridge, Thurgood Marshall, Hightower, and Madison!!! Westbury joined when Madison dropped out the second year of this group. Before Mr. Thornton died he and I had a conversation about changing the name of this group to take out the term "All-Star." He passed before the third summer of this group, and the band directors from T. Marshall and myself decided to keep it going in his honor because we KNEW he would want that to happen. I had a conversation with Mr. Joseph at Worthing and he told me he wanted his kids to go to a place where he KNEW the directors had his same philosophies about band as he did. He and ALWAYS saw eye to eye on what SHOULD be happening with our bands at Worthing and Westbury, and that's how Worthing came on board. The FOUR of us agreed on "Sensational Sounds as name purposefully leaving off the “ALL-STAR” title." That's how SS group got started!!!! 

Now...you people can say what you want about SS or Westbury all you want!!! I could care less!!!! Saying that one group is better than the other is like saying apples taste better than oranges!!!! That’s an opinion, not a fact!!! As long as I’m alive, I am going to continue to challenge my students at Westbury AND SS with MUSIC!!!! I'm not going to try to make Beethoven's 9th symphony out of "Hay" or "Hate Me Now!!!" I’m going to give them “A Fifth of Beethoven” and teach it to where my kids can play it with the utmost confidence!!!! I can’t say what other groups can or cannot play!!!! So don't ASSuME anything about SS!!!! Clearly there is a difference between the TRUTH and misinformation!!!! These are the facts!!!!