Buccaneers To Perform Free Community Concert

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The six-time defending Drum Corps Associates world champion Reading Buccaneers Drum & Bugle Corps will participate in the 2011 Hamburg Memorial Day parade and celebration on Monday, May 30, 2011. This year’s parade and celebration honors hometown hero Chief Master Sgt. Richard L. Etchberger, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor by President Barack Obama on September 21, 2010. Etchberger was killed in Laos in 1968 after helping rescue wounded colleagues and is the first airman to be awarded the Medal of Honor since 2000.

The parade will start at 9 a.m. Monday following a brief ceremony at the Hamburg War Memorial at Second and State Streets. The parade will end at St. John’s Cemetery, 55 Church Street, to be followed by ceremonies honoring CMSgt. Etchberger and those who gave their lives in defense of our nation.

The Buccaneers will perform a concert for the public on cemetery grounds following the ceremonies. All are invited. Admission is free.

Since November, the Buccaneers have been hard at work on the corps’ 2011 production, entitled “A Dancer’s Dream.” The program features The Chairman Dances, by John Adams, Danzon No. 2, by Arturo Marquez, Swan Lake, by Peter Tchaikovsky and “Mambo” from Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, by Leonard Bernstein. The corps will begin its competition season on Saturday, June 18 in Wildwood, NJ.

Founded in 1957, the Buccaneers are an education-oriented musical organization. The Buccaneers were founding members of Drum Corps Associates and won the first-ever DCA World Championships in 1965. Additional titles followed in 1968, 1979, 1980 and, most recently, in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 – all six undefeated championship seasons. At the 2009 DCA World Championships, the Buccaneers earned the highest score in DCA history, with a 99.025 out of a possible 100 points. In 2010, the Buccaneers set or extended DCA records for most consecutive wins (57), most consecutive world championships (6) and most overall world championships, with nine.

For more information about the Buccaneers, visit www.readingbuccaneers.org.

Posted by on Sunday, May 22nd, 2011. Filed under Current News, DCA News, FrontPage Feature.