How we
got here.

01 / 2006

Mr. Parker’s
first job.

Mr. Parker came to Ashley in 2006, straight out of college. It was his first teaching job, and by his own account he made plenty of mistakes in those first years.

The program grew anyway. Concert band and marching band were the core, with percussion, jazz, and small ensembles around them.

By about 2008 enrollment was somewhere around 120 students. That number is from memory, not a roster, but it was a full band room.

02 / 2016

The NCMEA conference.

Ten years in, the Wind Ensemble was selected to perform at the North Carolina Music Educators Association conference in Winston-Salem.

The conference program lists the performance for Tuesday, November 8, 2016, at 11 a.m. The entry describes a program active in concert, marching, chamber, and community music, with a history of Superior ratings. The page is linked below.

After the conference, the band took Carmina Burana to Music Performance Adjudication, or MPA. It is an ambitious piece for a high school band. Keep it in mind. It comes back at the end.

03 / 2020 onward

COVID.

Band depends on breath and on people in a room together. COVID took both away.

The program dropped to about 52 students at the low point. Rehearsals moved outside, in masks. Students left and did not come back. Mr. Parker was not sure the marching band would come back.

The students who stayed kept playing. What was gone was everything a band passes down from seniors to freshmen, and reopening the room did not bring it back.

The rebuild took class after class of students learning the program, staying in it, and teaching the next group. Most of the students who did that work graduated before the Carnegie Hall invitation came.

The 2026–2027 season is the seventh since the shutdown in spring 2020.

04 / March 19, 2026

The 2020 program,
finally played.

On March 19, 2026, both concert ensembles earned Superior ratings at MPA. The Wind Ensemble played at Grade VI and the Concert Band at Grade IV. The grade is the difficulty of the music, not a school grade.

Two of the Wind Ensemble pieces had been waiting six years. Vincent Persichetti’s Divertimento for Band, Op. 42 and Clifton Williams’s Symphonic Dance No. 3, “Fiesta” were on the program for the 2020 MPA that COVID canceled. None of the 2026 students had been in the band then.

The march was the one change. The 2020 plan was Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, Mr. Parker’s favorite. The 2026 students wanted John Mackey’s Xerxes, so that is what they played.

Ashley had taken Xerxes to MPA years before, early enough that Mr. Parker remembers it being an unusual choice at the time.

In May the Wind Ensemble played all five movements of Johan de Meij’s Symphony No. 1, “The Lord of the Rings.” The spring concert program is linked below.

05 / Inaugural class · 2025–2026

A Program
of Distinction.

The North Carolina Bandmasters Association named Ashley to its first class of Programs of Distinction. NCBA’s criteria are musical excellence, performance, community outreach, and advocacy.

The record includes Superior ratings from both concert bands, students in honor bands, jazz and chamber groups, the marching band and pep band, community performances, and work with younger musicians. Ten students made the 2026 Eastern District All-District Band by audition.

The Board of Education recognized the program on September 1, 2026. Mr. Parker’s remarks that night made one point: celebrate the programs that are doing well, and keep supporting the ones that are struggling.

06 / 2027 and beyond

Carnegie Hall,
March 25, 2027.

Mr. Parker has played there.

As a freshman at Mount Tabor High School, Mr. Parker played Carnegie Hall with his own band. The photo below is from that trip.

In March 2027 he goes back with his own students.

Both the Ashley Concert Band and Wind Ensemble have been selected for the National Band & Orchestra Festival at Carnegie Hall on March 25, 2027. The New York trip is planned for March 23–26.

The plan is to bring Carmina Burana back, for MPA and then for Carnegie Hall. It is the same piece the band took to MPA after the 2016 conference. The performance program is not final yet.

Young musicians have made this connection before.

Carmina Burana received its first New York performance at Carnegie Hall on November 21, 1954, conducted by Leopold Stokowski.

In 2012, 250 high-school and middle-school singers performed the work there with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Three young composers also wrote new music inspired by the piece.

Ashley’s students will be joining a tradition that includes young musicians making extraordinary music on this historic stage.

Enrollment this fall is the second highest in Mr. Parker’s twenty years at Ashley. Students in 2026 have more competing for their time than the students of 2006 did. They are still choosing band.

Alumni have come back from as far as Portland, Oregon, and New York to play with the band again.