High school students march in Macy’s parade

Three local high school band students were invited to experience the thrill of marching through the streets of New York City in this year’s 98th annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Brady Anderson, a senior at Windermere High School, and West Orange High School senior Adam McKenna and junior Asher Whitman were among the musicians selected to participate in Macy’s Great American Marching Band.

About 800 band members auditioned for a spot in the band. All three local students are experienced musicians. Anderson has been playing trombone for seven years, starting in sixth grade at Horizon West Middle. McKenna has played baritone since he was a sixth-grader at SunRidge Middle. Whitman began playing trumpet in middle school as well.

During the audition process, musicians had to submit a video of themselves performing a solo on their instruments plus various marching techniques.

Whitman performed in last year’s New York City parade, so this was a return performance for him.

“I did Macy’s last year, and all the people who have done Macy’s before, they automatically let you in,” he said. “They tell you that once you make it, you don’t have to audition again. You automatically make it.”

This trip marked the first visit to NYC for McKenna and Anderson.

“It was an amazing experience to be in something I’d been watching my whole life and surreal to be marching down the streets of New York,” Anderson said.

He said his favorite part of being in the parade was the performance at Herald Square.

“That’s where I got to be on television,” Anderson said. “It’s like the big moment that everything leads up to.”

The marching band stepped off from Central Park Thursday, Nov. 28, and performed at Macy’s Herald Square in front of celebrity hosts, a grandstand audience and more than 50 million TV viewers watching the parade on NBC.

Prior to the parade’s kickoff, there was a lot happening. The students, who were staying at a hotel in New Jersey, donned their red uniforms and hopped on a bus around 1 a.m. Thanksgiving Day. They went to Herald Square for a sound check and to rehearse marching the parade route down the empty dark streets. They all then went to the Hard Rock Café for breakfast before returning to their spot in the parade.

“This year was special because we also got to open the parade with a guy named Billy Porter,” Whitman said. “We were there about two-and-a-half hours before he got there. … While we were waiting, Jimmy Fallon was doing an interview across from us, and we yelled his name, and he came over and talked to us.”

“At the beginning, before the parade started, we recorded the opening of the broadcast with Billy Porter,” Anderson said. “For that, they had a recording and we just pretended to play ‘Ease on Down the Road.’”

While marching, the band played Pharrell Williams’ “Happy,” and during the performance at Herald Square, they played “Espresso,” by Sabrina Carpenter.

It was a fun day for the three teenagers, who didn’t let a little rain and cold temperatures ruin their experience – even if it was difficult to play the instruments with freezing-cold fingers.

“It was a little bit of a challenge with the rain … but once we got marching, it got warmed up and you kind of forgot about it. … just looking around and seeing all the people cheering us on,” McKenna said.

He said his favorite part of the parade was the beginning.

“We were getting ready for Herald Square, because that’s when we lined up, and it was getting real and about to happen,” he said.

Whitman had a hard time choosing his top parade experience.

“My favorite part of the parade, I think it’s between the actual performance we did and just walking down and looking at all the people,” he said. “The actual performance, it gets your adrenaline pumping. … When you’re performing, there’s like seven different screens that you’re looking at with the TV crew. … I’m in the middle of New York with a lot of people looking at me.”

After the parade, everyone met for a dinner dance.

The members of the Great American Marching Band enjoyed meeting one another and making friends with people from around the country. They made time for sightseeing, which included a tour of Radio City Music Hall, tickets to the Rockettes Christmas show and the chance to meet one of the dancers.

“The show was so amazing because when you’re watching it, it’s not just the stage you’re watching,” Whitman said. “It’s the roof, it was lit up, and it moved. As a musician, I was mainly paying attention to the pit; they were on a moving stage. It would just drop under the stage and then appear and reappear at the back of the stage.”

The three local students were accompanied on the trip by their parents and siblings, so they were able to spend time together exploring the city as a family. Anderson said he thinks NYC lived up to the hype.

Whitman was excited to return to New York City.

“I had a really fun experience this year because of all the people I met,” he said.

He and McKenna made friends with students from Arizona, Colorado and Wisconsin as soon as they stepped off the airplane

“I thought it was interesting because we all met at the exact same time,” he said. “Luckily we connected at the airport.”

Marc Kolodinsky is Windermere’s band director, and Ken Boyd is the band director at West Orange.

Whitman said many of the band members have stayed connected through a group text chat. There has been talk of a reunion band performing in a few years at the 100th annual parade, and many of the new friends have vowed to return to NYC to perform together again.