Taking on the position of Director of Bands, Jarrett Lipman joined the band and vision community in the spring of 2024, and began formally directing the marching band this 2024-2025 season. 

“I have felt very welcomed by the students, the parents, and the administration here,” Lipman said. “I miss my last school a lot, but I also loved the long opportunity and the new challenges with being in a fresh place. I had taken a break from band for a while, and I realized how much I missed it. So it’s great to be able to come back and to be a part of something as special as Vandegrift.”

Lipman formerly held the position of band director at Claudia Taylor Johnson High School in San Antonio, Texas. He worked there for 16 years, from when the school opened in 2008, until 2023. He is also currently pursuing a PhD in Education Leadership, Planning, and Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. 

“The students at Vandegrift love band a lot,” Lipman said. “This is very similar to what I had at [Claudia Taylor] Johnson, and I love that. I love students that are excited about getting better at band [and] I’ve loved how open and welcoming the students have been. Obviously a change in leadership is never easy, and I feel like the students have been supportive.”

In the past years, Katie Vandoren held the position of Director of Bands, serving the community here from 2010 until the end of this past 2023-2024 school year. Under her direction, the VHS Band and Vision Dance Company held the title of UIL 6A State Marching Band Contest Champion for two years in a row. 

“Vandoren and Lipman are both really good, but they both have very different teaching styles,” Aidan Borlet, senior and drum instructor said. “Vandoren [was] a little bit more strict, making sure every person is doing the correct thing all the time. I think Lipman is, in some ways, less strict. He lets leaders do more stuff, which is fun for me. Also when individuals are doing stuff wrong, he’s less likely to yell at them, which creates a more positive environment.”

Lipman’s directing style is focused on the fomentation of leadership. In band, students can be leaders in various ways, including becoming Drum Majors, Drill Instructors and Section leaders. This year the section leaders conduct warm-ups before rehearsals with their respective sections. 

“It’s very important that the students feel like this is their band program, because it is. They’re the heart and soul of it,” Lipman said. “I’m here as a coach to guide, support, and empower our students to make decisions and to feel like they’re involved in the process It’s a chance for them to practice skills that they’re going to use for the rest of their life.”

Lipman has also taken new approaches to band rehearsals. When it comes to facing Texas weather, on sunny, hotter days he starts rehearsals later in the afternoon in order to avoid the consequences of the afternoon heat. During rehearsals he also breaks down individual sets and works with groups of people at a time. 

“I think we’ve gotten to the point where it’s not a transition- now we’re kind of [looking at] what’s going on and how the band is doing now,” Borlet said. “I think for the first couple of months,it was very like ‘What’s going on? I don’t like this change.’ Now, [students are] like ‘Oh, this is better.’ We have gotten used to it.”

Despite a few changes, most of the procedures have remained consistent as majority of the band directors who previously made up the company are still working with the band department. 

“I love the rehearsal process here. I think what they’ve done in the past is terrific,” Lipman said. “I’ve learned a lot from the students and staff. It’s [about] figuring out how to embrace the process and procedures, and figure out how to put my own language into that and my own delivery. It’s definitely an effort to try to keep things moving in the direction that they’ve been going.”

The band and vision’s process was previously evident in the series of accolades they obtained in the past, including marching for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in 2022 andwinning the national title for the Band of the Americas 2019 competition. 

“I feel like Mr. Lipman has the outside perspective, because he has a higher standard of what [the band] puts out,” sophomore Sherri Xu said. “He really expects that from us, so he’s based his directing off of what he saw.”

With the UIL state competition taking place on Nov. 11 to Nov. 13, the band is already preparing for their competition season.. The show’s theme that will be presented this season is “Chasing Infinity.” 

“The band has had so much success, and I’m just laser focused on us being great at what we do and finding joy in it from day to day,” Lipman said. “I think when it comes to competition, students are going to be proud knowing that what they do is going to be at the very highest level. We compete against ourselves each week. We try to be a better version of ourselves, and when we attend competitions, we will go with the focus on performing at our very best and being our very best.”

Looking beyond the competition this year, Lipman has other long-term goals, including ensuring that students are continuing on their musical career, even if not professionally, in their post-secondary education. 

“My hope would be that when they look back on band, they look at what I’ve been hearing about band being a place that students want to be a part of, where students were able to find themselves,” Lipman said. “I want to see them keep wanting to play their instrument after they graduate. And that’s a big part for me, as I don’t want students that are so just so talented to put their instruments away when they graduate. I hope that that’s what we’re able to accomplish here — that kids will be inspired long beyond, you know, not to be music majors, but just to continue to share their gifts.”