The Demopolis High School band will hold a brief mid-spring concert Sunday at 3 p.m. in the auditorium on campus.

The event is the first of its kind for DHS band students and their advanced band counterparts of Demopolis Middle School.

“This actually is the first time we’ve done this,” Fields said. “It is a way to push the students, make them learn the music, do a little more of a serious program we wouldn’t normally do at our spring concert.”

The five-piece concert will feature more challenging and sophisticated selections that those normally performed by the band in its May concerts.

“We’re opening with a transcription of an orchestral piece entitled Pictures at an Exhibition. Then we’re doing One Night in Athens. It has a very definitive Greek sound to it,” DHS and director Matt Fields said. “Our next three will be pieces we performed at our music assessment in February.”

Those three selections will be Herndon Exaltations, In Autumn and March of the Irish Guard. The trio of songs will allow the band to show parents and others in attendance exactly what it has been working on over the course of the semester.

“We’re kind of doing this concert to give parents a chance to hear what we performed in PA,” Fields said. “This is going to be a lot more formal than our May concert is going to be.”

While the music itself holds a special challenge for the 36 band members who will perform it Sunday, the level of difficulty will also be slightly higher as the band will not perform the pieces together until the afternoon of the show. Given that the eighth grade band students meet at separate times and on a separate campus from their high school counterparts, the band has yet to have the opportunity to perform together.

“They’ve learned everything separately and we will put it together the day of the performance,” Fields said.

While admission to Sunday’s show will be free, the band will also have a small auction to serve as a fundraiser.

“During that concert we are going to do an auction of pre-made meals our students have put together,” Fields explained.

After completing the show, the band will focus all of its attention on its performance in May, which figures to have a much different feel than this Sunday’s concert.

“For the May concert, we are tentatively planning to do a pop style dessert concert,” Fields said of a show in which the band will serve coffee and desserts while playing a much more modern collection of music. “All our stuff will be very recognizable music, movie music, show tunes, big band tunes. We will be pre-selling tickets for that and will have them at the door. The location for that is still to be determined. That show is set for Thursday, May 3 at 7 p.m. with tickets at $10 for adults and $5 for students.