The Lord Mayor of Westminster is scheduled to visit Vero Beach High School next month to invite the Fighting Indians’ band to march in the London New Year’s Day Parade next January in England.
Steve Summers, who has served on Westminster’s City Council since 2006 and was elected Lord Mayor in 2016, will extend the invitation to school officials and band members at 9 a.m. April 9 at the Vero Beach Performing Arts Center.
He will be accompanied on the trans-Atlantic trip by Robert Bone, founder and director of the London parade, and Jonathan Whaley, one of the event’s senior directors of international participation.
Summers and Bone are expected to give brief speeches and make a power-point presentation about the parade.
According to a letter sent to Vero Beach from Powell Johann, the parade’s senior director of international participation, Summers “thoroughly enjoys visiting American high schools, colleges and other groups of young musicians in the United States.”
Vero Beach Assistant Band Director Brandon Putzke said the band will perform for Summers and his entourage, as well as local school and governmental officials, during the two-hour visit.
The Fighting Indians are among 20 U.S. bands invited to march in the 2019 holiday parade through London’s West End, where more than 650,000 people lined the streets along the two-mile route for this year’s festivities and an estimated 3 million watched on television. The bands were chosen based on their reputations, state ratings, success in competitions and performances at other significant events. This is the first time Vero Beach has been invited to march in the London parade.
Putzke said the band had been informally invited last fall to participate in the 2019 parade, and members decided in October to accept the invitation, which will provide the band with an opportunity to perform in front of its largest audience ever and, possibly, members of the British royal family.
The trip will cost about $3,300 per person, Putzke said, and the band is seeking donations from local individuals and sponsorships from local businesses. The group also plans to conduct fundraisers to offset expenses.
