By Mikey McGuire
With a mirror turned to the audience as they lept to their feet in ovation, Zionsville closed the book on their 2024 season and their show, “Sonic Reflections.”
Under the direction of Michael Rennaker and Orion Avery, Zionsville took a fantastically detailed, entertaining, and beautifully performed show to Dayton, and the whole ensemble left the floor proud as can be. With a fourth-place finish in PSO, “Sonic Reflections” blew the roof off the arena.
“We all felt really good about the season and how much the group grew through the course of this season and going through those different challenges. We were really happy with where things ended up at the end.” Rennaker said. “We were just really excited to get to put that show in the arena under the lights with a bigger crowd this year. The kids noticed the crowd was bigger, and we were getting bigger crowd reactions this year than we did last year.”
When it came to designing the show, a detailed and distinct approach were at the top of the team’s mind. From the larger drill moments reflecting others, all the way down to a snare solo in a mirrored right-hand tradition grip, or mirrored tenor sweeps up and down the drums, this show was meticulously crafted.
“We have a lot of brainiacs.” Rennaker said. “The kids really love all the little Easter eggs and things that they can latch on to and talk about that makes their show stand out and be unique.”
The passion for details didn’t stop at the box. Zionsville has long prided themselves on being a collaborative program, and “Sonic Reflections” was no different.
“I talked to a few of the kids just to hear what they had to say about the show.” Rennaker said. “With a lot of them, a pretty common theme was the level of attention to detail. What things were being reflected and mirrored that you could watch the show 10 times in a row, and probably pick up something different each time.”
To really hammer home the whole idea of mirror and reflection, Zionsville had mirrors all over the floor for performers to interact and shape the space with.
“So there were two different types of mirrors. There were stationary ones along the back that were actually a little bit taller than the ones that moved.” Rennaker said. “They were really easy to move. You could manipulate them. We just had a single handlebar on the back and the center that the kids used to move them around. They were pretty easy to get to where you wanted to go.”
Another major element of the last few years at Zionsville has been their unique front ensemble setup. With two rows of pit members on either end of the tarp, Listening environments, a cohesive sound and timing are all significantly more difficult, but Zionsville has pulled it off beautifully. They also take the unique pit set up just one step further, by making a few members move their boards while playing and join the battery in the drill.
“Being able to manipulate the stage in different ways and frame things in different ways, visually, is the unique thing. The kids really love it.” Rennaker said. “When I talked to them, our pit kids and battery kids talked about they like having the opportunity to interact between the different sections at a closer and deeper level than they would if there was just a traditional front ensemble set up across the front and the battery marching behind them. They don’t really get to play off each other’s performance emotions as much that way. But when you’re spinning marimbas around, marching with them and getting able to see and interact with the other performers, it just brings a different energy to the arena.”
To match the visual complexity of the show, the design team tapped Phillip Glass’s “The Hours” to make the musical foundation of the program
“The idea behind that was just like a real physical mirror is made out of glass, the musical conduit, the musical mirror of the whole show is also made up of glass with a capital G.” Rennaker said. “That’s going on the whole time. But then there’s also little things like if the snares play a lick, the tenors maybe play the same lick or the same rhythm but in reverse, or if there’s a tenor sweep that goes out in the right-hand, then it also always goes out in the left hand. There’s some real intellectual and cerebral things going on in addition to all the artistic stuff inside the book.”
At the end of the day, Zionsville can look in the mirror and be incredibly proud of their 2024 program. With all the detail and love they put into it, it serves as a perfect reflection of the ensemble and all the amazing talent within it.
About the Author:
Mikey McGuire has marched 3 seasons of WGI percussion, First playing cymbals with Crystal Lake Thunder out of Crystal Lake, Illinois in 2018. He moved on to Pi Percussion out of Romeoville, Illinois in 2019 and 2020, also playing cymbals. Mikey also writes for Missedapexpodcast.com as well as his personal blog mikeymcguireF1.com.
