A small blond boy stood in the hallway holding a saxophone, appearing to be on the verge of tears.

It was about a half hour before the Kenosha Unified School District’s 53rd annual Band-O-Rama festival, and the boy, not too much taller than his saxophone, had broken the mouthpiece on his instrument.

“Now, don’t get worked up about this,” said Gary Everett kindly, taking the boy’s saxophone and fitting it with a new mouthpiece, and with the help of another volunteer calming the boy down.

Everett, a band teacher who works part time at Pacetti’s Music Unlimited in Kenosha, was one of two repairmen for the music store volunteering their time at the festival to do last-minute repairs for students.

“That was the second alto-sax repair tonight,” Everett said, pulling out the evidence of the earlier repair, a plastic fitting marked with deep gouges. “His dog got hold of his mouthpiece,” Everett said. “That was a new one, even for us.”

Band-O-Rama is the biggest event of the year for music students in Unified schools, a festival that brings together everyone from beginning band members in fifth grade to the most accomplished high school students.

All 1,700 students gather at the Bradford High School fieldhouse for a concert led by a guest conductor. This year, Dr. Andrew Mast of the Lawrence Conservatory of Music led the concert.

The students perform 18 songs over more than two hours, ending each year with the combined elementary, middle and high school bands playing “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

“For the last two days I’ve been taking Dr. Mast on a whirlwind tour of the middle schools and high schools,” said Dr. Robert Wells, Unified’s coordinator of fine arts.

Mast worked with each student band for about an hour, readying the groups for concerts Saturday evening and this afternoon.

“He worked really well with them,” Wells said.

For students like David “DJ” Smith Jr., a 10-year-old trombonist from Pleasant Prairie Elementary School, performing at his first Band-O-Rama, the event is a chance to perform before a big audience, and to hear the performances of older students who have been at it awhile.

Waiting with his mother and brother before the concert, he said he wasn’t nervous.

“There’s so many people” playing that no one would be able to hear it if he makes a mistake, he said.

His mother, Regina Smith, was looking forward to her first experience with the festival.

“I was crying at the rehearsal,” she said. “It was just so beautiful, to see all those people come together. ... It was the first note that got me.”