Saturday marks Chris Jansen’s fourth year working with Eastern’s annual Panther Marching Band Festival for high school students.

Jansen, a senior music education major, will be a band guide for this year’s festival. His duties will include meeting with two bands when they arrive and helping them stay on schedule. He will be in charge of making sure each band knows where they are supposed to be throughout the day.

The 32nd annual Festival will take place all day Saturday at O’Brien Stadium.

Jeffrey Steiner, coordinator for the Festival, said around 2,000 students representing about 100 Illinois bands will be on Eastern’s campus for the weekend.

Jansen is not the only student who will help with the Festival this year.

Steiner said the event is student-run and they perform the duties of judge assistants, band guides and gate monitors.

Steiner said the high schools participating come from all over Illinois but most are no more than an hour or two away.

Schools involved range from Charleston High School to Richmond-Burton Community High School from Richmond, the last town on the northern border with Wisconsin.

Steiner said every high school in Illinois was sent an announcement about the competition and around 20 high schools will enter to participate in the competition. Bands will perform based on the size of their band.

Each band will have a 15-minute time block from when they take the floor to when they end their performance.

Steiner said each band will perform for approximately 7 to 10 minutes and will play excerpts from larger pieces of music.

There are no set guidelines that dictate music performed so music will be a variety, but emotion is one of the objectives of performing music at this competition.

“The students try to present a variety of emotions,” Steiner said.

Bands will start performing at 9:30 a.m., and competition will continue until 4 when the Panther Marching Band will perform.

Three rotating judges tape the bands as they perform and give feedback on the performances in a 15-minute clinic after each band performs. The bands can then take the tape with them and hear how they sounded.

The last group of judges decides best color guard, best drumming and best percussion section. Each one of the three judges in this section will be in charge of looking for the best in each of these areas.

Once a band has performed and been through their clinic, they stay around to watch the bands from competing schools.

Steiner said the Festival is one of the music department’s primary recruiting activities.

“It’s a really positive experience with music at our institution,” Steiner said.