Saturday, Feb. 17, Hamilton Southeastern’s indoor percussion ensemble participated in their first contest at Franklin Central. Their show revolves around the existence of a volcanic goddess who attempts to take over the islander’s, whom are played by the percussionists. The visual performers in the show portray the lava. The show’s music was written by Alan Frye, but is now directed by Candace Boone. Entitled Rise, their performance came in fifth place out of 14 teams.

“Since this was our first competition and the first time anyone has seen our show I think we did pretty good seven out of the 14 total groups,” senior Paul Novosel said. “There is still a lot we have to add visually and musically so our show is still very much in the works and I feel like we will only go up in placement.”

While they are happy with their score, the team hopes to improve in their next competition March 3, the day following their community night performance with Fishers High School. Until then they hope to utilize their practices to improve specific elements of their performance before competing for the second time.

“We need to work on shaping the music with dynamics and making sure that everyone expresses the tone of the show by performing,” senior Noah Milleman said. “Also just making sure we keep our nerve levels down and not get over excited.”

The group has been practicing their show since early Jan. and has been in the works for longer. The group had many changes in music and how the show was organized and will now continue to practice and perform up until mid-April.

“I feel like for the first week out the group performed to the best of their ability,” Milleman said. “There’s is some areas we need to work on but overall I was happy with the result.”