limegut

1865 Union drum corps. He was (officially) the youngest person in the Union military. Talk about dinosaurs. I was the next person in my family to do drum corps.

I believe 2010 counts, but I have a very wide view of what jazz is. The trumpet solo in the middle emulating a jazz combo was fantastic, as well as the swing sections.

http://www.dci.org/news/view.cfm?news_id=bfb93cb2-6438-4e4d-a2d8-2ba7a3c5d889

Corps data works well for the members. It makes it easy to get parts, scores, and drill. I have heard that it is a bit clunky for the management side, though. It's probably preferable to have a corps website that distributes parts, scores, and drill to the members rather than corpsdata, but corpsdata is easier to set up.

Cadets 1997 and Crown 2012 are my top 2. I've played Year of the Dragon on euphonium, it really does require a virtuoso band to play sitting down. So many thirds in very fast, long 16th note runs. I can't imagine playing anything harder.

Kids tend to love the cavaliers (especially in 2011 with upside-down stuff and stilts)

Fiedler on the roof

SCV was better finals night (marched the show)

For your audition, you could do the 1999 Vanguard opener. Lots of dynamics, and you can show off with the time signature changes. Its a 5/4 - 5/4 -5/4 -6/4 pattern.

I very recently had my audition with SCV and made it into the bari/euph line. Most of the applicants had previously marched in the open class or the non-finalist level of open class. It seems to me that being in an open class corps not only makes you look better on paper, but it will also improve your playing, marching, and understanding of what a drum corps is. You can get into any corps with talent and respect, but open corps will improve both. I marched Velvet Knights last year, and my experience helped me out tremendously in how I performed at auditions, but remember, hard work (in practice and rehearsal) is really the only way to get to a top corps.