NORWICH – The 33rd annual Fall Festival of Bands will be held at 6:30 p.m. Saturday under lights at Norwich High School.

The Norwich show is one of the oldest in the New York State Field Band Conference. The conference began with what was called “The Gold Rush” in 1971 in Sherburne. Two years later, Norwich began competing and out of the six original charter members, only three now perform. There are nearly 60 bands overall in the conference.

Performing bands competing in Norwich this weekend include Pride of Westmoreland, Johnson City Wildcats, Johnstown Marching Sir Bills, Baldwinsville Bees, Central Square RedHawk Regiment, New Hartford Spartans, Norwich Tornado, and a drum major retreat.

Within the field band competition there are classes which are split into divisions based on school size. Each band takes the field to provide an array of entertainment lasting less than 13 minutes. The Norwich Field Band will be performing a musical suite of Russian Culture, originally by Aram Khachaturian’s Gayne Ballot.

Judges look at both the visual and musical aspects of each band. Within the visual and musical categories, judges rely on seeing the general effect the performance has, the entire ensemble’s performance and timing. Scoring is based on a 100 point scale, and as shown by the students in past performances of this season, many schools finish with hairline differences in points.