Pioneer Announces 2010 Program

2010 marks Pioneer 49th year in DCI competition. The Milwaukee based corps has community roots and an Irish identity that is unmistakable. This year’s show has taken a slightly different direction while maintaining a corps treasure, its “Corps Prayer”. As most Pioneer shows have been obviously Irish music, the design team began looking for ways to maintain their identity. One of these vehicles that made sense was what the “corps prayer” meant to the staff and students. By using words and phrases from the corps prayer, we hope to capture the emotional and intellectual meanings of the words and phrases and what they mean to the people that are saying them. Current Pioneer students and also alumni will remark about what the prayer meant to them. Coordinated musical and visual events are being planned to signify these meanings.

The music for this year’s show comes from a variety of sources. The show opening is planned as a Gospel Blues southern spiritual setting with “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” as the musical theme. The show moves immediately into a rousing version of Sandi Patti’s “Make His Praise Glorious”, which is a contemporary praise anthem. The center piece of the show is derived from the Grammy Award featured piece, “The Prayer” which is most notably sung by Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli. The final third of the show is musically based in Choral/Symphonic works from composers such as John Rutter and David Holsinger with strains of the popular spiritual “Amazing Grace” throughout.

This year’s staff is mostly returnees from previous years with some outstanding additions as consultants to the program.

Program Coordinator is Donny Allen
Visual Coordinators are Jeff Wroblewski, Eddie Griffin, and Chad Quamme
Show Consultants are Allan Murray and Eddie Griffin
Brass Arranger is Donny Allen
Brass Caption Head is Donny Allen assisted by Oscar Escobar
Visual Arranger is Jeff Wroblewski
Percussion Arrangers are Adam Hill and Kirk Gay
Percussion Caption Head is Adam Hill
Front Ensemble Coordinator is David Hochreiter assisted by Brandon Reimers
Visual Caption Head is Chad Quamme
Color Guard Caption Head is Jill Herrick

Technical staff includes: Ben Love, Oscar Escobar, John Damore, Lansing Dimon (brass) Steven West, Kimmie Wallace, Bob Venecamp, Matt Wyse (visual) and Liz Mitton (color guard). More announcements to come soon on remaining tech staff positions. Anyone interested in technical staff positions can contact the office at http://pioneer-corps.org or call 414 327 2847 during the day.