The Blue Devils Percussion Front is a part of the award winning Mt. Lebanon High School Marching Band. This performance ensemble, also known as The Pit, is unique among local high schools and allow students in grades 9-12 the opportunity to perform before thousands of fans at football games and band festivals. In combination with the Blue Devils Drumline, the Percussion Front has won numerous awards including first place and superior ratings at competitions around the country.
The instrumentation for the front consists of multiple keyboards (marimbas, xylophones, vibes, bells), a wide variety of drums including bass drum, concert toms, snare drum, congos, bongos and various percussion accessory instruments. In addition to playing their instruments, the members of the Percussion Front add visual excitement to the total marching band show.
The Percussion Front maintains a fairly intensive rehearsal schedule. Weekly practices (4 hours each) begin in June and continue through the first week of August. Students who are on vacation are excused from attending. The front then joins the full marching band for two weeks of band camp during mid August (7:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. Mon. - Fri.). Once school begins, the Percussion Front has one, two-hour sectional, per week in addition to the full marching band evening rehearsals.
Membership in the Percussion Front is open to any 9th - 12th grade percussionist through either the Departmental audition process (grades 10-12) or the 8th grade marching percussion audition for the incoming freshmen class. The audition is not exclusionary. It is used only to determine whether the incoming student will be placed into the Percussion Front or the Drumline. The Mt. Lebanon Percussion staff provides instruction to all interested 8th graders during their regular band class in order to prepare them for the audition. This instruction is conducted during February and March with the audition taking place in mid April.
