And the Beat Goes On for Bonita Band — Drum Major Matt Acevedo and Drum Captain Steven Hennig Help Set the Tone

Bonita Drum Major Matt Acevedo conducting a practice for another competition this Saturday.

While the football, water polo and volleyball teams are all winding down their seasons after grabbing most of the ink and online pixels this fall, Bonita’s biggest team with almost 100 members will still be performing and competing in December. On Dec. 5 at San Marcos College, the Bonita Marching Band likely will enter its toughest competition yet as one of a dozen top schools vying for honors at the division championships on Dec. 5 in San Marcos.

How far the band goes will largely fall in the hands of Bonita’s multi-talented baton-holding drum major Matt Acevedo. It will be his leadership, attitude, passion, dress and deportment that the band will feed off to wow both the audience and the judges.
 
“He’s a great leader,” said Mike Inzunza, a former drum major who owns MI Music Store in Glendora and also directs Bonita’s drumline. “He takes pointers and criticism really well and has turned himself into a conductor the band trusts, respects and responds to.”

Suited for the role

Inzunza added that a good drum major has to be cut out for the role. “It’s definitely a tough spot to be in sometimes,” he said. “You’re up on a podium all by yourself, you’re wearing a different uniform, and everyone is looking to you for encouragement.”

Acevedo, now a senior who also plays clarinet, bass guitar and sings, seems like he was born for the job.
“To be honest, it’s a blast,” Acevedo said on a rehearsal break. “It’s an honor. I feel like I’m helping to make that little difference, to give us that extra edge to get us to the top. It feels so good. I’m so proud of our group.”

Acevedo is the first to recognize he’s still a student as much as a leader, despite his lofty conducting position.

“I’ve learned a lot from being in this position,” he said. “I have learned a lot about leadership and about myself, about my weak points and my strengths. It’s helped me become who I am. I feel stronger and more confident than I did before I took this. It’s been life-changing for me.”

He’s certainly learned responsibility.

“I’ve seen how my attitude can affect the band,” he said. “Like sometimes, if I’m having an off day, I notice that the band won’t bring the same intensity. Then on other days, when I’m really into it, giving them a strong down beat, and you can see my facial expression and all these crazy hand motions I’m doing, then they really get into it and knock it out of the park. That’s really awesome.”

More awesome are Acevedo’s future plans. He wants to major in music at the University of Texas at Austin, where his father Art Acevedo lives and is also the city’s police chief. “That’s my first choice, because music is everywhere in Texas.” He’s also applied to several California universities, just in case the college script he’s written for himself takes a few unexpected turns.

More immediate, Acevedo is looking forward to performing in the winter drumline. “Marching indoors is a different environment,” Acevedo explained. “I don’t love it anymore than being drum major, it’s just less tense and intense.”

Drum Captain Steven Hennig standing in front of drum line performers, front row, David Centeno, Marcus Klotz, Sage Tomita, Tyler Miller, Bryan Mitchell, Ryan Mendes, and back row from left, Devin Cheyne, Daniel De Guzman and Nathaniel Batoon.

A band’s drum section has often been likened to a beating heart while the other sections, such as the clarinets, low brass, color guard and the pit, are the arteries. “If the drumline is pumping good blood, then the band is working great,” Inzunza explained. “If the drumline has a good day, then the band has a fantastic day.”

Multi-talented musician

Bonita’s drum captain and heart pumper is Steven Hennig, like Acevedo a senior and multi-talented.
 
Hennig, who has been playing the drums for seven years, has continually grown as a drummer and a leader. “When you’ve been playing for so long, you get so much more comfortable and are able to do things a lot more easily, which makes it a lot more fun to play and lead your section,” he said. “It’s a treat to play and be part of this great band.”

Again like so many of Bonita’s band members, Hennig doesn’t stop making music when he marches off the field. With Bonita band assistant and musician Curtis McPherson and other band friends and members, he plays in rock and reggae bands that have performed at The Grove in Anaheim and The House of Blues.

Somehow, despite logging more than a dozen hours a week with the Bonita band (he led the drum line on Tuesday night into the gym to help fire up the host Bearcats volleyball team against Palm Springs High School), Hennig is an excellent student who plans to attend the University of California at Davis to major in physical therapy. But he has an ulterior motive.

If accepted, he is going to audition for the Concord Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps, the most decorated corps in the history of Drum Corps International competition.

“If I go to Davis, I’ll be a half hour from Concord,” Hennig said. “That way, I’ll be able to drive down or take the bus to practice.”

That’s the kind of dedication and total commitment that Hennig brings to everything he does. On homecoming, before attending the evening dance, he showed up at Bonita at 9 a.m. to rehearse for four hours with members of the drumline, then hopped on a bus to a band competition, performed, changed clothes in the bus on the way home, was picked up by his dad, got home, showered, put on his suit, picked up his date and attended the dance.

“He was a little late for the dance, but he has been right in step with the band from his freshman year, and likes the energy and sound it’s now bringing.

“The band is playing loud and really strong this year,” Hennig said. “The other sections are really pushing the drumline. They’re really blowing it (that’s a good thing). It sounds and feels really balanced.”

And they’ll be blowing it and drumming it on Dec. 5 once again when all of Bonita’s other fall teams have long been silent.