Aubrey Aseri, a senior at Radford High School, has a very special attachment to marching band.

"At Radford my freshman year, it was the very first year that we started because we finally got a teacher," she said. "I didn’t know what we had to do but, like, every year was an experience, like memorizing your music and marching to it and making different formations.

"I love marching band."

On Thanksgiving Day, Aseri will be showing that love on one of the world’s largest stages as she marches down the streets of New York with Na Koa Ali‘i, also known as the Hawaii All-State Marching Band. With the autumn sky full of huge, helium-filled balloons of kid-friendly characters, she and about 380 other musicians and dancers from Hawaii will be filling the streets with aloha.

"It’s like a big reward, a big thing, giving me an opportunity to go to New  York," Aseri said.

The band, comprising select musicians from 40 high schools throughout the state, will be performing in the famed Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for the second time in six years, a testament to the quality of the islands’ band programs and the allure of Polynesian culture.

"You can apply every four years, and usually about 150 apply," said John Riggle, Na Koa Ali‘i’s managing director and former band director at Kamehameha Schools. "The odds of getting in are pretty slim."

Wesley Whatley, creative director for the parade, said in an email that Macy’s is excited to once again welcome the Hawaii band. "This band represents Hawaiian music, culture and pageantry in a stunning and colorful way that is perfect for our event," he said.

Putting the band together has been an exercise in logistics as much as musicianship. Unlike most bands in the parade, a Hawaii state marching band doesn’t exist from year to year unless Riggle gets an offer to participate in prestigious events. He first organized Na Koa Ali‘i (the King’s Warriors) at the invitation of the 2003 Rose Parade, where "the band got a lot of coverage and really stood out," he said.

Encouraged by the experience, he has formed bands for the 2005 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the 2008 Rose Parade.

Riggle asks music teachers at all Hawaii public and private high schools to select their best band musicians and travels to the neighbor islands monthly for rehearsals. Drill routines are available via the band’s website.

The Macy’s parade band could not rehearse as a complete group until this week — after everyone got to the mainland. The group will visit Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia before its Thanksgiving Day appearance.

Band members used recipe book sales, a "Broadway Bound" jog-a-thon and other fundraisers to help pay the $2,700 cost per participant, and additional support was provided by EPIC Foundation.

Of the 380 performers, who include 50 dancers, about half are from Oahu. A quarter of the members are from Maui, with the remainder split between Kauai and Hawaii island. The band is the only one of the 11 bands in the Macy’s parade to be drawn from talent across a single state. Most of the other bands represent individual high schools and institutions.

"Composite (bands) are dangerous because they look good on paper," said Riggle, who brought the Kamehameha band to the Rose Parade three times before forming Na Koa Ali‘i, "but then they’ll get there and you’ll be thinking, ‘What in the world is this mess?’"

That doesn’t appear to have happened here. Band members, many of whom know each other only as competitors in school band tournaments, said it has been rewarding to play with musicians from other schools rather than compete against them. They’re eager to perform as a whole band.

"I can’t wait until we meet with the other islands and see how it turns out," said Bryce Kim, a baritone sax player from Campbell High School, adding that he is looking forward "to being part of something that big."

Megan Pimentel, a senior clarinet player at Kamehameha, said playing in the band is "a good opportunity to meet them as people rather than, ‘We have to beat them.’"

She is concerned about the cold, with temperatures in New York during November usually ranging from 40 to 50 degrees. She was able to borrow cold-weather clothing from her cousin but may have difficulty keeping track of it during the parade frenzy.

"We’re going to be all bundled up when we’re actually marching, but then we turn the corner where all the big cameras are and we throw off all our huge jackets and stuff and we’re just in our regular performance uniforms with, like, the skirt and the aloha print," she said. "That’s going to be kind of hectic having hundreds of us taking off our sweats and jackets and everything."

THE BAND will perform before an anticipated audience of 2.5 million people in New York City and 50 million on television. The set list includes a medley of "Tahiti-Tahiti," " Masese-Masese" and "Hawaiian War Chant," with "Mele Kalikimaka" sending viewers into the Christmas spirit.

The band will offer a distinctively Polynesian flavor with the use of to‘ere log drums. Members will be attired in black pants with knee-length ili hau skirts and a long-sleeved aloha shirt custom-designed by Mamo Howell. Each member will also be adorned with fern head and wrist lei.

Some of the dancers will appear in Tahitian-style outfits with long, red skirts, multicolored tops, feathered hairpieces, and i‘i (hand tassels). Hula dancers will appear in ti-leaf skirts with bright red and yellow tops, lei and uli uli (feathered gourd rattles).

"There’s no other group that can be formed like this, in athletics or no matter what you’re looking at," Riggle said. "I mean, all-state, every school. Holy cow."