Let them play Newsday: High school’s Tiger Marching Band fights to overturn postponement of annual festival

The 58th Newsday Marching Band Festival, annually organized by Newsday, has been postponed, yet again, due to the pandemic. In response, members of the Northport-East Northport community are making their voices heard: “Let them play Newsday,” they’re saying, in unison.

The Newsday Marching Band Festival has marked the close of the Tigers’ fall season ever since its founding. In fact, Robert W. Krueger, the Tiger Marching Band’s first head director, co-founded the Newsday Marching Band Festival himself in 1963. The festival began as a competition, though, as the Tiger Marching Band continued to sweep the top prize innumerable times over, the festival dropped its juried status. Northport High School is now asked to give the final show-stopping performance every year.

The last Newsday Marching Band Festival took place in October 2019. Over 40 marching bands across Nassau and Suffolk performed at the three-day event. (Other school districts, including Harborfields and Central Islip, among others, have also expressed their disappointment regarding the postponement).

What seemed to be an assured reopening, however, with college stadiums and rock concerts filling their halls to the brim, quickly turned sour. Certainty devolved into confusion, and then anger. As festival organizers wrote on their Facebook page, “The safety of our student musicians, attendees and staff is our number one priority. As the pandemic continues to endure, we have decided to postpone the 2021 Newsday Marching Band Festival.”

The announcement did not sit right with all those students, parents, and teachers of Northport-East Northport who have worked so tirelessly to bring their beloved marching band back.

Of this news, current Tiger Marching Band head director, Lynn Cromeyn, wrote: “Disappointed as ever at this decision. Stadiums around the country are filled with college marching bands and fans for the fall season! Band directors all across the country have figured out how to endure even though the pandemic continues.”

The students of Northport High School reacted as well, taking their disappointment one step further. Upon hearing the news, Tiger Marching Band student leaders quickly sprung into action, creating a Change.org petition headlined by the band’s ultimate goal: #letthemplayNewsday.

Northport High School senior and band president Braden Ciszek, the creator of the petition, gave the following argument in support of their cause: “The annual Newsday festival has been canceled for 2021. This is an outdoor event that was taken away last year due to Covid. This year it is more than possible and safe for it to happen when indoor stadiums are filling with thousands of people every weekend and high school football teams are traveling again. There is no reason for us not to be able to play this year, we have already lost enough to Covid.”

As of Wednesday evening, September 15, the petition had already amassed over 2,100 signatures in less than 24 hours. In support of the movement, Northport High School senior and band officer, Logan Chin wrote, “I am an officer in the band and every event the band has participated in has been nostalgic to me. Especially the Newsday Festival, which is up there for the event we all look forward to the most. For it to be canceled/postponed is upsetting.” Invoking a similar sentiment, high school senior and band officer John Leonick writes, “This event is loved by many in the community and provides so much necessary experience for our younger band members.”

The Northport Marching Band Booster Club, on a popular Facebook post boasting a whopping 78 shares and counting, defines the movement as such: “#letthemplayNewsday is a call to let our marching bands perform. All of our district’s safety protocols would apply at the festival (i.e. masks in indoor spaces, hand washing/sanitizing, no mingling with other schools). Our marching band students have already spent the past two months practicing and performing together, and the return to music has been an overwhelmingly positive experience. We need more of that. A LOT more. PLEASE spread the word on social media by using #letthemplayNewsday.” The Tiger Band also wishes to remind those that participate through social media to tag @Newsday when sharing, along with the above hashtag.

The Tiger Marching Band’s various officers, drum captains, drum majors, rank leaders, and remaining members have all decided to continuously post photographs of their fondest Tiger Band memories, all underlined with the hashtag. Their hope is to flood the social media streams of Newsday with the love and memories surrounding their revered program, and how that very experience, after two years and countless rehearsals, simply cannot be taken away.

Harrison LeBow is a Northport High School senior and co-drum captain of the Northport High School Tiger Marching Band.