Justin Carlson | Opinion Editor
Wabaunsee High School’s band is traveling to Mission Valley High School tonight for the annual Joint concert between the two schools.
Band and Choir director Jaime Rogers started it when he was still at Mission Valley and Richard Philbrook was the director at Wabaunsee. “Mr. Philbrook and I started it. I imagine we ran into each other at [a band conference] and said ‘Hey we should do this thing next year,” Rogers said. “I’m gonna guess this is the 11th or 12th year if not longer. I know before COVID we had done it for maybe 8 or 9 years running, so it has been going on for a while.”
The combined concert had been an annual occurrence until COVID impacted the ability of the two schools to perform together for the past two years. This year will be a return to normalcy — except that Rogers has switched teams. He declined to comment on which school was more talented.
Rogers said, “It is so cool to have the musicians collaborate because it makes really good music and usually anything done between schools is in competition so that collaboration is really unique.”
Since COVID has disrupted the past two years, only Seniors have ever played with Mission Valley in this concert. Senior Cecelia Emmert said “It was fine. It was interesting to get together with a different band because they sound different than us.”
The Wabaunsee county-wide concert is 7 p.m. tonight at Mission Valley High School.
The Charger 
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