Empire Statesmen Open 2012 Season
Rochester’s Empire Statesmen opened their summer field show contest season in Bridgeport, Connecticut on Saturday, June 30 in the Champions on Parade contest, featuring all five of the top finalists from the 2011 DCA championships: current champions Minnesota Brass; second place Buccaneers of Reading, Pennsylvania; third place Empire Statesmen; fourth place Connecticut Hurricanes and fifth place Caballeros of Hawthorne, New Jersey. The Bushwackers of New Jersey also competed.
The Champions on Parade competition was the first of five contests for Empire Statesmen, leading up to the annual DCA championship tournament which will take place in Annapolis, Maryland on Labor Day weekend.
The Empire Statesmen are scheduled to compete in DCA field contests in Lynn/Boston, Massachusetts on July 21; Hornell, New York on July 28; Kingston, New York on August 4 and Scranton, Pennsylvania on August 18. The Statesmen’s summer schedule will also take them back to New York’s Darien Lake Theme Park and Resort for performances on the July 7 and August 11 weekends.
The Empire Statesmen’s final performance of the summer season before the championship weekend will take place in neighboring Webster on August 25, a field show exhibition including the Statesmen and other drum and bugle corps and several of the area’s top high school marching bands. Information about the show is available by visiting the Statesmen’s Website at: http://www.statesmen.org/
The contest schedule follows the busiest spring season ever for the Empire Statesmen, who began performing in community events across upstate New York in late April, starting with a benefit concert in Medina. Since then, the Statesmen have appeared in Rochester’s big Lilac Festival parade, Memorial Day parades in neighboring Irondequoit and Pittsford, a concert in Geneva during a weekend stay at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and a concert and rehearsal weekend in Mexico, a small town northeast of Rochester near Lake Ontario, concerts in Darien Lake Theme Park, and a dress rehearsal for the field show in Webster. The Statesmen will mark Independence Day with parades in Oswego on July 1 on the return trip from Bridgeport and in Irondequoit on July 4.
About the Empire Statesmen
Since first competing in 1983, the Empire Statesmen have won five DCA world championships, four American Legion national titles, and the World Show Band championship while placing in the top four at DCA championships for 23 consecutive years.
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. The Empire Statesmen also sponsor the Empire Cadets youth band as part of a longstanding community outreach program, which includes participation in community parades and festivals across a wide area and benefit concerts to support music programs across western New York and southern Ontario.
For more information about any aspect of the Empire Statesmen organization, call (585) 266-2232, e-mail esmen [at] rochester [dot] rr [dot] com or visit the Empire Statesmen Web site at: www.statesmen.org
