Empire Statesmen Top Every Caption Except Guard To Win Pageant Of Drums

Rochester’s Empire Statesmen swept to first place in the Pageant of Drums in Waterloo, New York on Saturday, August 2, as their scores in execution captions moved up sharply to match their earlier high general effect scores and audience appeal.

Winning the contest with a score of 88.463, Statesmen were tops in every caption except color guard, with high scores for field, ensemble, and composite visual, field, ensemble and total percussion, field, ensemble and total brass, composite music score, visual, music and total general effect.

Syracuse Brigadiers, finishing second with 85.825, had the top color guard score. Rochester Crusaders were third, with 81.825. Fusion Core won the Class A division of the contest with 75.550, followed by White Sabers with 73.775, Kingston Grenadiers with 73.075 and Carolina Gold with 70.900.

Statesmen have now covered the board in results during their 25th anniversary season, finishing first, second, third (twice) and fourth in five contests since their season began at home in front a capacity crowd at the 5th annual Vince Bruni Preview of Champions.

The Drum Corps Associates (DCA) level of competition is exceptionally high this season, with eight different winners of 16 DCA contests so far this season. There are only three more weekends of regular competition in August before the world championship tournament, sponsored by the Empire Statesmen for the third year in a row, takes place in Rochester, New York on Labor Day weekend.

Next week, Statesmen will compete in Kingston, New York in a contest also featuring the Bushwackers, Hawthorne Caballeros, Connecticut Hurricanes, Fusion Core and Dansville White Sabers. The contest begins at 7 pm in Dietz Stadium. Statesmen, Caballeros and Hurricanes have each won at least one contest this season.

Reading Buccaneers, defending DCA champions and undefeated this season, Caballeros, Statesmen and Bushwackers, last year’s top four DCA finalists, meet again on August 16 in Scranton, Pennsylvania in the Parade of Champions American Legion National Championship. The contest, beginning at 7:30 pm in Scranton Memorial Stadium, also includes Connecticut Hurricanes, Syracuse Brigadiers and Rochester Crusaders.

Empire Statesmen are celebrating their 25th anniversary season with a field show that features an opening fanfare of Moonlight Serenade, followed by Take The A Train and Sing, Sing, Sing. The arrangement of My Way includes snippets of Broadway hits Sun and Moon, the love ballad from Miss Saigon, and With Every Breath I Take, the lover’s lament from City of Angels. Music from West Side story leads into the percussion section feature, The Rumble. The show comes to a conclusion with a patriotic medley.

Since first competing in 1983, the Empire Statesmen have won five DCA world championships, four American Legion national titles, and the triple crown: the DCA and American Legion titles and the World Show Band championship in London, England all in the same year in 1998, when the field show featured music from West Side Story. Empire Statesmen have finished in the top four during DCA championship tournaments for 20 consecutive years. The Statesmen are sponsoring the DCA championships for the third year in a row, with events in several downtown Rochester locations and at PAETEC Park.

The Empire Statesmen drum and bugle corps is a self-supporting independent group that represents the city of Rochester across the United States and Canada and as far abroad as Europe, the Caribbean and South America.

For more information about any aspect of the Empire Statesmen organization, call (585) 266-2232 or visit the Empire Statesmen Web site at: www.statesmen.org