Warren High hires Eric Villalobos as band director
Eric Villalobos has been hired as the new band director at Warren High School. (Photo by Alex Dominguez)
DOWNEY — The Warren High School Band and Color Guard will go through a period of rebuild in 2021. That starts with new band director Eric Villalobos.
Villalobos, 39, decided early on that he wanted to be a band director, after watching “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” a film centered around the 30-year musical teaching career of Glenn Holland.
“In 7th grade, after watching Mr. Holland’s Opus, I was like, ‘You know what? It’d actually be pretty cool to be a band director, a music teacher,’” said Villalobos. “Just because of how you can affect these kids' lives, and stuff like that.”
Primarily a brass player, Villalobos started his higher education at Fullerton college, spending six years while “making a living” in instructor and assistant band director roles at several different schools in the meantime.
Eventually, Villalobos said that he realized that he had “too many things going on all at once,” and he “needed something different.”
He joined the Army in May of 2007.
“Really it was because I wanted to join to pay for school,” said Villalobos. “I could just do my four-year commitment, come back, get the GI bill and finish school, and focus on school.”
However, Villalobos says that “there was more to the Army that it had to offer me.”
“I was realizing that I was a member of the team,” said Villalobos. “I realized it’s not about me, it’s more about what am I contributing, what story am I telling?”
Villalobos would perform with several ensembles within the Army, and while deployed, would aid in the teaching of the Afghan National Army Band.
His service would take him around the United States and into Germany, Kyrgyzstan, and Afghanistan. He would transition to the reserves – where he still performs – at the end of his active service.
Villalobos would go on to earn a Bachelors in Music Education and a Bachelors in Tuba Performance from Azusa Pacific University.
After a couple of opportunities as an assistant at California High School and Santa Margarita Catholic High School, Villalobos found himself as director at Valley Christian High School in 2019 and 2020.
Villalobos is no stranger to Warren’s instrumental music program. Throughout his career, he’s found himself standing across the competition field from the Bears.
“My program used to compete against [Warren] when I was at La Mirada and at Cal,” said Villalobos. “I could already see that Warren was chomping at the bit to be successful, and they were.”
“Watching it from the stands and just seeing how successful and how big the program has been getting, it’s a lot to chew; it’s a lot to digest.”
Though having steadily grown in strength and accolades over the past decade – culminating in back-to-back gold medal wins at the Southern California School Band and Orchestra Association field championships in 2017 and 2018 – the program has faced recent backlash amongst reports of inappropriate behavior from the band’s former director Dave Niemeyer and staff, forcing the change in leadership.
The transition also comes at a time where schools are still adjusting to a post-pandemic norm.
Villalobos asks that students and parents “give him a year,” saying that the theme of the year is to “reconnect and rebuild.”
“My vision for this year is really just to reconnect with everybody,” said Villalobos. “I think the hardest challenge for me right now is reconnecting with the upperclassmen…having a new band director is always going to be a challenge, that’s just kind of the norm.”
“I think my vision overall though – and this has always been a vision of mine – is just being able to create good kids… teaching kids to be musicians can mean one thing, but teaching them to be good kids so they can learn those principles and ethics and things like that is going to be more beneficial. Seeing them be successful in their future will definitely warm my heart and be even more of a success for me.”
Villalobos lives in Orange County with his wife Maggie.