OXNARD : High School Band Invited to Washington

Fifty years after American forces landed at Normandy, a Ventura County high school band is preparing to land on a different shore to celebrate the anniversary of the World War II invasion of Normandy.

The Hueneme High School concert band has been asked to perform in Washington, D.C., on June 22 for a 50th anniversary commemoration of the famous battle.

As the only high school band selected from California, the group will represent the state at the three-day Normandy Liberation and Bicentennial Music Celebration that is being sponsored by the French government. They would join about 35 bands from other states.

Festival organizers said they chose the Hueneme High band on the recommendation of a national association of symphonies.

Indeed, the Hueneme High band earns consistently superior ratings at music competitions, band director Michael Doty said. And the walls of the Hueneme High band room are lined with trophies and plaques earned in contests from Norwalk to Stockton.

But for most of the flutists, drummers and other student musicians in the group, Washington would be the farthest they have ever traveled from home, Doty said.

Students said they were surprised to learn they had been chosen for the trip, to include sightseeing tours in the nation’s capital. “I was flabbergasted,” said John Montes, a senior who plays clarinet.

Now they just have to raise the money to get there.

Doty estimates it will cost $950 per person, or about $53,000, to send 50 students and five chaperons.

That’s roughly $50,000 more than is left from the band’s last candy sale. But Doty said he is confident they will raise most of the money from local businesses and service organizations throughout the state. Parents will have to chip in the rest.

Besides giving the students an opportunity to travel, Doty said the trip would benefit the children musically.

“They’re so limited here,” Doty said. “They’re used to audiences around here who appreciate them because they’re their own sons and daughters.”

At the celebration in Washington, the student musicians would be treated more like professionals, the band director said. “They’ll have to play in a location they’ve never played in before and hear applause from people that have never seen them before,” he said.