ST. LOUIS — When Normal (Ill.) Community High School competed in last year's Greater St. Louis Marching Band Festival, the routine was themed "Godzilla Eats Las Vegas" and featured lots of props, flash and modern dance.

On Saturday, Joshua Masterman, the marching band's director, took the group 180 degrees in a different direction and had the kids play Baroque music — Johann Sebastian Bach's, to be exact. The result was a stripped down, musically challenging number that was big on substance and short on glitz.

"I wanted to prove that we can continue to get students interested in new styles of music," Masterman said. "Baroque music is not something they get to do every day. For this competition, we souped it up for contemporary ears."

The Normal band — with a set called "Bach to the Future" — was the only one that went total Baroque among the 46 marching bands competing Saturday at the Edward Jones Dome.

The festival is typically the last in a series of regional competitions. That means, for most band members, the end of long after-school practices often spent on a muddy football field.

"It's really the Cadillac of all competitions, said Bob Boedges, festival manager and a former band director at Normandy and Collinsville high schools.

The 38th annual festival had all the trappings of past years' events — an abundance of feathers and glitter, proud band parents screaming their kids' names, and tubas, trombones and trumpets.

It also featured escalating levels of showmanship. Some band members wore elaborate costumes such as Renaissance-era knights and maidens, Egyptian gods and goddesses and even a super-trendy vampire or two.

Other bands used props such as railroad crossings, Roman columns and surfboards.

The Parkway West High School marching band used banners depicting scenes from Times Square, made all the more real by color guard members toting suitcases and maps like tourists.

"We've had the music picked out for some time so it was a matter of coming up with a strong visual concept," said the school's band director, Ben Pyatt. "We realize that some people have a tendency to listen with their eyes."

Michael Bouchard, the band's trumpet section leader and a senior, said the performance was a bittersweet moment for him. It will be his last marching band competition as a high school student.

"It's meant two weeks every summer, after-school practices. It really takes up a lot of time," Bouchard said. "You have to love it, and I do."

It's a sentiment shared by Sam Marshall, Parkway's drum major who will be graduating this year.

"It's really sad because you build up such relationships with these people and you know that after today you're really going to be limited in how much you see them," she said.

For the most part, band members were focused more on the competition than on their thoughts of the future.

Many planned on sticking around to see the larger bands perform during the evening hours.

Chelsea Wright and the other members of the Normal band were going to take a short break at St. Louis Mills mall before returning to the dome to catch the evening competition.

She liked her band's chances, especially considering the guts they showed by tackling Bach.

"It might deter some bands, but this is a very talented group," said Wright, a senior. "We love the challenge."