In the traditional Chinese Calendar 2025 is the Year of the Snake so it’s appropriate that this story contains several twists and turns, ranging from the New York Skyliners, 9/11, the Major Deegan Expressway, and a kidney. As an added bonus in trying times, it even features a happy ending. Lily Woo’s Drum Corps story […]
It’s said “experience counts”, but there’s world of difference between 10 year’s experience and 1 year’s experience 10 times and so many who consider themselves “creative” are often the antithesis thereof. Some of our Drum Corps colleagues, it’s true, were original thinkers right from jump street (or so it appeared). Think of names like Hoffman, […]
It seems clear that some are born with abilities and potential a cut above the rest of us mere mortals. This is a benefit to all of course, since they provide us with the inspiration to achieve our aspirations. Dave Hill was one such fountain of inspiration. This is not to say that he himself […]
Sometime in the fall of 1971, I was walking down Waverly Place in Greenwich Village with a friend. A group of German tourists with backpacks and “Youth Hostel” virtually written all over them approached from the opposite direction. Just as they passed, I heard a young woman exclaim, “Das ist er! Das ist er!” There […]
As everyone knows, the Greeks had their Mt. Olympus, the Romans their Pantheon, and the Norse their Valhalla, special places wherein resided the larger-than-life gods, demi-gods and heroes, under whose influence mere mortals went about their petty pursuits. Today most of us scoff at such a simplistic view of the cosmos, but there are lessons […]
Today he’d be called a “Dreamer”, qualified for the DACA Program, but those terms didn’t exist in 1947 when Billy Cobham’s family brought their son to Brooklyn from Panama, at the age of three. For the next few years, young William was not allowed “off the block”, but one fateful summer day in the early […]
Few are left who know much about it now, and many of them aren’t certain whether it was real or just some mythology concocted by the drum corps elders, whose own veracity might be questioned. Indeed, it’s wrapped in mystery and fading inevitably into the recesses of time. But rest assured, it is no myth, […]
When she was a very young girl, she had a little problem with her wrist and hand, so she worked it out with some saber and rifle spins. A few days ago, at Davies Hall, with Michael Tilson Thomas on the podium, her hands flew gracefully around the violin and drew forth the gorgeous sounds […]
It’s just barely visible and you can miss it even after you know it’s there. Still, if you’ve ever seen one, it’s unmistakable… How old can he be, that young man with the far-away expression, standing near the doorway of the DC-3, sometime around midnight on that fateful evening? Surely he could still qualify to […]
There once was a time in Drum Corps when the color guard was the Gulag to which were sent all those who were unfit or unready to play horns or drums. The guard was officially known as “the auxiliary”, a term that had always conjured up (at least in my mind) something like an appendix, […]
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