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On Thursday, Callaway High School’s concert and jazz bands will be holding its spring concert at the Callaway Auditorium at 6:30 p.m.

Jason Hernandez, CHS’s new band director, said this year’s show is titled “New Beginnings” and will feature music from Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park and Disney classics.

Instead of doing tickets in the traditional sense, Hernandez said tickets are free and are based on a donation ticket system.

“People are more than welcome to reserve their tickets on Eventbrite and quote-unquote pay your price. They’re welcome to put in $0 or $1 for their tickets,” Hernandez said. “All the proceeds go right back into the program to progress the band, the instruments and the students themselves.”

He said there also be a donation box located in the lobby on the day of the concert.

For many of the students in the band, this will be their first time performing outside of the stands.

“This is my first semester as the band director — I was an audio-visual teacher before coming to Callaway, and from what I understood, they have not performed a concert outside of our basketball gym on campus. I was shocked because every musician deserves to play in an environment that’s designed to hold such music and the basketball gym is just not one of those places,” Hernandez said.

Once he got the position as band director, Hernandez said he was determined to schedule the upcoming concert in the auditorium.

“Top symphonies have performed there, and these kids deserve a change of pace and the opportunity to play in such a place. Thanks to colleagues at the college, we were able to make that happen,” Hernandez said.

Hernandez said when he told the kids about the new venue, they were excited.

“When I broke the news to them, there was a lot of excitement, and I even thought I saw some tears. It’s a really big deal, and I hope to start this trajectory toward this level of performance and use this concert as our first stepping stone,” Hernandez said.

In preparation for the concert, the students began learning the music in early February and knew it by Spring Break.

“When I told the kids the amount of songs we were going to do, they were understandably intimidated. They’re used to playing five or six songs, and I told them, we’re shooting for ten. We would start learning a song on a Monday and by Friday we would finish it, which meant we were knocking out a song per week,” Hernandez said.

“They were very intimidated, but we ended up moving ahead of schedule. I wanted to get them to believe that they could do it and then when they were doing it and we knocked out our entire concert by March 31. They surprised themselves, but I knew that they could do it and this concert is going to be their grand prize for all the hard work they’ve put in.”

To buy tickets for the Callaway Bands’ Spring Concert visit eventbrite.com/e/callaway-bands-spring-concert-tickets-593745146717.