Hillside High School's Immortal Sting Marching Band has been invited to perform in the 2027 Sugar Bowl Parade in New Orleans, and the school's band department has launched a fundraising campaign to make sure all 80 student musicians can afford to go. Band leaders say insufficient funds could keep the Durham group from traveling at all, so they're racing to close the financial gap over the next two months.
The trip carries a price tag of about $1,500 per student, according to ABC11 News, which first reported on the band's invitation and its push for community support. Band Director Patrick Jones II, a former North Carolina Central University Sound Machine drum major, said the experience would be eye-opening for students, calling it an opportunity for them to grow as professional musicians and performers. For some members of the Immortal Sting, the station notes, the trip would mark the first time they've ever traveled outside North Carolina.
Hillside's band department is asking for donations and sponsorships to help cover travel costs for the New Orleans trip, and Jones has specifically requested partnerships, sponsorships and community investment in the students, per the same report. The Hillside Band Parent Organization has also launched its own targeted $60,000 community fundraising drive through Cash App at $hillsidebpo2526, aimed at covering travel, lodging, meals and uniforms, according to a post from the Hillside Band Parent Organization. The band hopes to raise enough within the next two months so every student can make the trip.
A Personal Connection for the Band Director
For Jones, the Sugar Bowl invitation is something of a full-circle moment. According to the Hillside Marching Hornets Alumni Band Association, Jones first experienced the Sugar Bowl Parade as a high school freshman marching with Charlotte's West Charlotte Senior High School, an experience he has credited with inspiring his career in music education; he recalled that trip yielding first-place trophies for his school. Jones stepped into the Hillside band director role for the 2025–2026 academic year after previously leading the instrumental music program at James E. Shepard Middle School in Durham, according to the North Carolina Central University Office of Alumni Relations, and he is a 2013 NCCU graduate.
Students in the program describe the band as more than an extracurricular. Nadiyah Dumas said students connect through church songs and gospel music and feel like a big family, ABC11 reported. Kwame Hester said band taught him discipline, time management and to always have fun, while Eric Henry said the New Orleans trip would be a major opportunity for students to travel together as a family.
What Sugar Bowl Week Actually Looks Like
Bands selected for Sugar Bowl festivities typically take part in a multi-day itinerary that includes Mardi Gras-style parades, field show competitions, and public performances at historic sites like Jackson Square in the French Quarter, according to Music Travel Consultants, which helps produce the events annually alongside national educational travel organizations. Six-figure trip budgets are the norm for these appearances — bands invited in recent years, including Daytona Beach's Mainland High School in 2024 and Virginia's Nansemond River High School in 2018, faced fundraising totals exceeding $120,000 to transport 70 to 90 student musicians and chaperones, per The Observer Local News. Mainland High reportedly raised its funds rapidly after receiving a late-fall invitation, offering a rough blueprint for how quickly a band program can mobilize a community once a bowl bid arrives.
A Legacy Program Representing Durham's Oldest Black High School
The Sugar Bowl invitation lands on a campus with deep musical roots. Hillside High School, established in 1887 as the Whitted School, is the oldest operating historically Black high school in North Carolina and one of only five remaining out of more than 300 that operated before desegregation, according to the Museum of Durham History. The school received its current name in 1922 when it moved near Hillside Park on Umstead Street, and today operates as an International Baccalaureate magnet high school on Fayetteville Street enrolling 1,454 students, per the National Center for Education Statistics.
Hillside's musical pedigree stretches back more than 80 years. In May 1942, student musicians from Hillside helped make national history when they were selected as members of the U.S. Navy B-1 Band, the first all-African American band unit enlisted in the modern U.S. Navy, according to East Carolina University Digital Collections; the 44-member unit drew members from Hillside, North Carolina Central University and NC A&T. Closer to home, the Immortal Sting has a long-standing tradition of closing out North Carolina Central University's annual Homecoming Parade in Durham, a slot it filled again in October, and the band captured the Grand Champion title along with first-place honors in music, marching, percussion, dance, flag and general effect at the 2013 Battle of the Bands hosted at NCCU, per The Hillside Chronicle.
That history gives added weight to the fundraising push now underway, as band leaders frame the Sugar Bowl trip not simply as a once-in-a-lifetime performance opportunity but as a chance for Durham students to represent their school's legacy on a national stage. With roughly two months to close the gap, Hillside's band department and its parent organization are counting on donations, sponsorships and community investment to get all 80 musicians to New Orleans together.
