Hour one: he’s getting ready for rehearsal on a Monday morning.

Hour eight: he’s racking his drum and rolling his marimba up the ramp. 

Hour 22: he’s performing at the football game.

Hour 36: he’s finally heading home. 

Senior Kenneth Han has found a way to incorporate music into his life ever since third grade — even when band takes up 36 hours of his week. From rehearsals, to football games, to competitions, to honorary performances, what started as piano lessons in South Korea turned into an ongoing love for percussion. 

“I was in Korea, and my mom’s friend runs a piano lesson place, and they had an electric drum set there,” Kenneth said. “One day, after my piano lesson, I saw this guy playing drumset. I thought it was so cool, and so the next day, I tried it, [and] it was so fun. When I came back to America, I signed up for lessons. [Now,] for the past four years, [band] has been what I’m known for. We spend so much time in band that it basically becomes just like a job.”

Kenneth has been part of the marching band for all four years of high school. During marching season from his freshman to junior year, he played marimba for both the band show and the drum show. This year, Kenneth is marching the snare drum for the band show while playing marimba for the drum show due to dropouts.

“A lot of things come very easily to [Kenneth,]” assistant percussion director Dr. Adam Davis said. “The challenge with him was finding things that would help him grow, things that he couldn’t do right away, so that he was still building his skills. His brain is always ticking. He might not speak a lot, but his brain is always going through the problems and solving things in real time.”

Kenneth suffered a wrist injury last summer; he couldn’t practice for three weeks. He was dealing with tendonitis and couldn’t turn his wrist properly. However, head percussion director Ben Koch said Kenneth is constantly trying to improve, which is why he has an underlying amount of trust in him.  

“He’s got a good head between his shoulders,” Koch said. “He’s got a mature sense of humility beyond his age. He would tell you he’s struggling, and that’s an indication that he’s doing a fine job. He’s going to beat himself up over the small things, which means he’s just going to continue to get better.” 

Prior to this year, Kenneth only marched a drum for the Rose Bowl Parade in 2021 — his freshman year. Though he was thrown into the snareline, percussion captain and center snare Ben Guidry said Kenneth knew what he had to do, but had to practice a lot to catch up with the rest of the line since he was surrounded by drummers with at least a year of experience. 

“Being able to teach someone that I respect a lot, [and that] I know will be receptive musically, I was really excited for what [he] would bring,” Guidry said. “He has experience in how he listens to what we play and gives comments that we, as battery players, don’t. He’s able to listen and hear things that I don’t, simply because he has experience in the front ensemble.”

Kenneth is a National Merit Semi-Finalist and plans on majoring in engineering while continuing to play marimba as a hobby. He competed in the 11th Annual Great Plains Marimba Competition this past summer. Though he didn’t win, Kenneth said he was proud of the performance he was able to achieve since he improved from the previous year.  

“I feel peace and joy while playing marimba,” Kenneth said. “I’ve established myself as a marimba player. Every time I’m playing marimba, I get locked into it. [It’s] like I’m in the zone, and there’s nothing else that gets me in that zone.”

This story was originally published on The Hawk Eye on October 29, 2024.