When Sam Acus auditioned for the band MINC last year, the teenage mandolinist from Richmond wasn’t sure what to expect. “I’ve played music since before I can remember,” said Acus, who grew up in a family of musicians and music lovers. “I’ve known for my entire life that this was going to be my thing.”
For that reason, Acus, now 19, said finding other musicians his age with the same level of enthusiasm and commitment was difficult, even in school music programs. Then he heard about MINC, a student-run band made up of top high school players from all over Vermont. So he reached out to the band’s founder and lead vocalist, Satori Rossi, about joining.
“When we all started playing, I was like, Whoa. This is seriously good,” Acus recalled of his audition.
When we all started playing, I was like, Whoa. This is seriously good.
Sam Acus
Unlike some of his soon-to-be bandmates, MINC wasn’t Acus’ first band. He’s studied with the likes of local mandolin ace Will Patton and former Yonder Mountain String Band mandolinist Jacob Jolliff. He also performs with the Maine bluegrass outfit Breakin’ Strings. Yet he was still blown away by the skill of the young players in the room. This was not your typical high school garage band.
“MINC is rare in that it’s a really high level of musicianship,” Rossi, 17, said, citing bandmates’ placements in Vermont All-State groups, among other accolades. “We all bring our own experiences and tastes and skills to the table.”
Those tastes and skills have made MINC a force since forming four years ago. Typically consisting of six to eight members — largely depending on who’s graduated and gone off to college — the band tours the state with a handful of shows a year. Once they replace the three university-bound players leaving this fall — including Acus, who’s headed to Berklee College of Music in Boston — MINC plan to tour outside Vermont and, later this year, release a debut record.
It all adds up to a crash course in how to be a professional band for musicians who aim to pursue the a career in the field. Rossi and his bandmates handle everything from booking shows to promotion to coordinating rehearsals for a group that’s had as many as 16 members from all corners of the state. While Rossi has brought in professional musicians and instructors to offer guidance, he and his bandmates call the shots. In MINC, the students are the masters.
Rossi, who attends Woodstock Union High School, learned many of the skills needed to run a band through SoundCheck, an annual program run by composer, multi-instrumentalist and music educator Brian Boyes. Boyes, who leads the local cosmic-jazz big band Saturn People’s Sound Collective and teaches at Harwood Union High School in Duxbury, brings together student musicians to perform original songs with a social justice bent. Four years ago, Rossi joined as a bassist, which laid the foundation for his own project.
“Getting started in collaborative performance like that was so influential to me,” Rossi said. “Brian was a support structure, but he wanted us to do our own thing.”
When SoundCheck ended, Rossi wanted to create something similar but make it entirely student-run. “If we’re doing all this work, composing and performing and managing our own band,” he explained, “then I wanted us to be the deciding factor on what we were going to be.”
MINC’s first incarnation was as a small band formed to play a short set at East Montpelier’s Maple Roots Festival four years ago. Rossi’s father played drums. Over the next two years, Rossi added musicians he knew from local schools. (If you’re wondering, MINC is an acronym, though Rossi declined to reveal what it means, explaining, in the time-honored tradition of high school band names: “It’s kind of stupid, but we thought it was funny at the time.”)
As players have moved on to college or other pursuits, Rossi has sought out new ones to replenish MINC’s ranks. Or sometimes, as in Acus’ case, they find him.
“Sam was the first member of the band to ever reach out to us to join,” Rossi said. “Otherwise, I brought everyone together.”
Rossi is currently recruiting new musicians for the upcoming school year and has an open call out for crew members — sound engineers, lighting designers, roadies, media managers, etc. It shouldn’t be a difficult sales pitch. The pop-funk big band has lately logged pro-level gigs at BarnArts’ Feast & Field series in Barnard, Zenbarn in Waterbury Center, and the SEABA Center in Burlington. For teens with musical aspirations beyond high school, these are formative experiences.
“I’ve been drumming since I was 3, and I always dreamed of going on a tour,” said Grayson Eley, a 15-year-old drummer from Duxbury who joined MINC a year ago. “Just getting to be on these stages we’ve played has been a huge step for me and gave me so much exposure to the whole process of being in a band.”
According to Rossi, every member of MINC plans to pursue music after high school. So each show offers valuable reps, both onstage and off. The band gathers every weekend to rehearse, plan out the next run of shows, review promotion materials and craft set lists. Just as importantly, its members train together as collaborative artists, working on each other’s original music and tightening their musical rapport.
“The band is such a great learning experience, but it’s also, you know, a band,” Acus said. “When I joined, I fit right in, socially and musically. There’s a real sense of camaraderie wrapped into the whole experience that I don’t take for granted.”
MINC perform a variety of funk- and soul-laced covers but have increasingly added original songs to the mix. To Acus, hearing an expanded version of the band take on a song he wrote at a SEABA Center gig earlier this month was a highlight of his time in the group. For that show, MINC enlisted a string quartet and a trio of vocalists, swelling its ranks to 16 musicians — “all high school students, even the sound guy,” Acus said.
“To hear that many people playing and singing a song that I wrote,” he went on, “it was just completely incredible.”
MINC recently recorded a debut EP of original music and hopes to release it later this year. It may prove to be the band’s swan song in Vermont.
Rossi graduates from Woodstock Union High School next June. MINC will gig that summer, but their founder will head off to Boston for college — possibly Berklee, but he isn’t certain yet. One thing he does know is that he plans to continue with MINC.
“My plan is to bring the band to college with me,” Rossi said. “I’d love to keep as many of the members the same as possible.”
With Acus and bassist Xavier Mayhew bound for Berklee, MINC seem destined to become the latest Vermont band to seek their fortunes in Boston. If so, the lessons they learned in Vermont, both in and out of the classroom, should serve them well. ➆
This article appears in August 26 • 2026.
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