From struggle
to distinction.

01 / 2006

A first job.
A shared beginning.

Mr. Parker came to Ashley High School in 2006, fresh out of college and beginning his first teaching job. Looking back, he describes those early years with honesty: there was a great deal to learn, and plenty of mistakes along the way.

The program grew through daily rehearsal, student commitment, and the support of families and educators. Concert and marching bands were part of a wider musical home that also made room for percussion, jazz, small ensembles, and students finding their place in music.

Mr. Parker remembers enrollment reaching roughly 120 students around 2008. The number is a recollection, but the larger story is clear: a community was taking shape. Each class of students helped establish expectations and traditions that the next class could build on.

02 / 2016

A stage earned together.

A decade into that work, the Ashley Wind Ensemble earned the opportunity to perform at the North Carolina Music Educators Association’s professional development conference. It was a meaningful statewide recognition of what students and their community had built.

The original conference publication lists Ashley’s performance for Tuesday, November 8, 2016, at 11 a.m. in Winston-Salem. Its profile describes a program active in concert, marching, chamber, and community music, with a history of Superior ratings.

After the conference came another musical milestone: a performance of Carmina Burana at Music Performance Adjudication, or MPA. Mr. Parker remembers it as an especially ambitious and personally meaningful undertaking. That music would become a point of connection between the program’s first decade and its next chapter.

03 / 2020 onward

When the music
was interrupted.

COVID disrupted the routines that make an ensemble possible. For band and choir, where making music depends on breath and on people listening and performing together, distancing and masking changed the experience of rehearsal itself.

At Ashley, the effects were profound. Mr. Parker recalls the program falling to about 52 students at one point. He remembers rehearsing outdoors with masks, struggling to retain students, and wondering whether the marching program and the larger musical life of the school could fully return.

Those students were still making music. But the continuity between classes, the confidence of a full ensemble, and the shared habits built over years had been interrupted. Reopening a room could not immediately restore all of that.

That was a long view of what recovery would require: successive classes of students learning, staying, and helping the next group find its way. The students who persevered through the difficult years made today’s opportunities possible, even when they would graduate before seeing the result.

The rebuilding also depended on families, teachers, school administrators, district leadership, and arts educators continuing to believe that the program was worth supporting. The 2026–2027 season approaches the seven-year mark from the shutdown in spring 2020. For Mr. Parker, the return has been a sustained process, not a single successful concert.

04 / March 19, 2026

The music comes
full circle.

In 2026, both Ashley concert ensembles earned Superior ratings at MPA: the Wind Ensemble performing at Grade VI and the Concert Band at Grade IV. Those grades describe the repertoire level, not the students’ school grades.

For the Wind Ensemble, the repertoire carried a history of its own. Vincent Persichetti’s Divertimento for Band, Op. 42 and Clifton Williams’s Symphonic Dance No. 3, “Fiesta” were the works Mr. Parker recalls preparing for the MPA that was canceled as COVID arrived in 2020. Returning to them in 2026 meant finally bringing that unfinished musical work to the adjudication stage with a new generation of students.

The march was the one change from the intended 2020 Wind Ensemble program. Mr. Parker had planned to pair the Persichetti and Williams works with his favorite march, Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. In 2026, the students were drawn to John Mackey’s Xerxes, and he chose to follow their enthusiasm.

Xerxes already held a place in Ashley’s musical history. Mr. Parker recalls Ashley being among the early ensembles he knew to bring its unconventional character to MPA. Returning to it connected the students’ own musical interests with the program’s past. The choice made the performance theirs.

The Persichetti masterwork, the exuberance of Fiesta, and the distinctive voice of Xerxes made the program more than a list of demanding pieces. For Mr. Parker, hearing students meet that challenge was evidence of a musical return years in the making.

The year’s work extended beyond MPA. In May, the Wind Ensemble performed all five movements of Johan de Meij’s Symphony No. 1, “The Lord of the Rings.” The Concert Band, percussion students, and other ensembles contributed their own performances to a season of renewed ambition.

05 / Inaugural class · 2025–2026

A Program
of Distinction.

The North Carolina Bandmasters Association named Ashley to its inaugural class of Programs of Distinction. The designation recognizes musical excellence, performance, community outreach, and advocacy.

The record behind that recognition reaches beyond one ensemble or one concert: Superior performances by both concert bands; students participating in honor bands; jazz and chamber music; marching and other school-spirit ensembles; community performances; and collaboration with younger musicians. Ten Ashley students were selected by audition for the 2026 Eastern District All-District Band.

The September 1, 2026 Board of Education recognition offered a moment to reflect on the people behind the award. In preparing his remarks, Mr. Parker returned to a simple responsibility: celebrate programs that are succeeding, and keep supporting programs that are struggling.

This recognition belongs to generations of students and to the families, educators, administrators, and community members who stayed with them. No one director, class, or concert built it alone.

06 / 2027 and beyond

The next chapter
belongs to the students.

Once a student on that stage.

For Mr. Parker, Carnegie Hall is also part of his own story as a student. During his freshman year at Mount Tabor High School, he performed there with his band. The photograph below preserves that moment in his musical life.

Now, the opportunity to return with Ashley brings that experience full circle: a student who once stood on this stage has become a teacher preparing to bring his own students there. They will arrive with their own music, their own friendships, and their own sense of what might be possible. This time, the experience will belong to them.

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 planned New York trip runs March 23–26.

Mr. Parker’s musical plan includes returning to Carmina Burana for MPA and Carnegie Hall. A work that helped mark the first decade of his time at Ashley could now become part of another generation’s story. The performance program remains a plan as preparation continues.

The educational aim reaches beyond entering a famous building: prepare demanding music, learn from clinicians, perform with purpose, and bring those experiences back to the classroom. The invitation is a milestone in that work, and an opportunity to imagine what the next ten years could hold.

As the 2026–2027 year begins, Mr. Parker describes enrollment as the second highest of his time at Ashley. Today’s students have different demands on their attention and more ways to spend their time than the students he first taught in 2006. They are still choosing band. Families are still finding value in the community it creates.

The next chapter is about continuing to earn that trust: expanding what students can experience, deepening what they learn each day, and helping them carry music into their lives beyond graduation. In his board-meeting preparation, Mr. Parker recalled alumni traveling back from as far away as Portland, Oregon, and New York to perform with the program again. That kind of return speaks to a connection that lasts long after a student’s final school concert.

Music education gives students repeated opportunities to listen, contribute, persist through difficulty, and make something meaningful with other people. Carnegie Hall can be one extraordinary part of that education. The lasting story is what students take with them, and what they make possible for those who follow.