KVG_DC

Down the comments someone asked and the response it's Brahms Symphony 1

Necro +1 Needed to ressurect this thread as for some reason the YouTube algorithm fed me this gem. Those kids seemed to have a great experience all year. The bit in the tunnel with them singing along with Bloo and Boston was 100% a "welcome to the upper tier" moment. RIP that euph at about two minutes in though. 🤣

We had a pack of incredibly young looking Midshipmen from Naval Academy on our campus for a tour today. They were all up in uniforms looking somewhere between a recruiting poster and goggle eyed kids looking around at all the Deaf people. I was suitably amused.

MBA (at the time) had a Summer Grand Nationals that finished every year at .. Whitewater! But... it died FAST as the expense of doing both summer and fall field shows + kids not wanting to do both seasons + summer school resources being axed hard by school boards, particularly for the arts pretty much made summer band become a combination of parades and learning basics before taking up your show learning at camp. My nationally competitive ISSMA band at the time never even entertained the notion of doing a Summer field show. It stretched our resources enough to do the Fall ISSMA circuit and invitationals + a 'big trip' every 3 or 4 years (either Grand Nats, which was not yet always at Indy, or a Bowl parade.) My sister did Grand Nationals in Jacksonville, TN her freshman year in 1981, then the Orange Bowl parade her senior year. I got one trip, the Rose Bowl Parade. We were able to do MBA regional and Grand Nats as well only because they'd moved in state. Getting logistics permission to take the school busses out of state was...complex as we learned from the Band Director. And this was in the heyday of funded school marching arts and a robust parents group raising money. That band got crushed not long after when the school corporation 'refocused learning goals' and support for summer arts and arts in general were allocated to another school in the district and even then at a meager rate. The band parents org kept supplemental funding going but after a time, the money moved to other areas of the city and yeah it just devolved fast. I don't know that many programs have the resources to do a summer program and those that do are competitive in their fall seasons and value that probably much more...so...they're not gonna split resources for a new summer ensemble most likely. Dec - end of May were 100% when jazz band and concert band as well and solo and ensemble were going on. As well as support for swing choir and school musicals. Pulling enough kids to learn a summer show to put on the road...again, not likely.

Is BDE still a thing? Would that count? There was a European circuit for age hike too? Are they still around?

I didn't know I needed a Couchmen Two-peat T-shirt until today.

The Blue Devils? [dons my nomex suit]

Grants and such that have now ended as revenue sources. If they didn't prepare for the end of these revenue sources and look at what would replace them...it's a jarring end. There's a fair few small colleges facing this sort of cliff right now too given that the grants and such were a godsend to their budgets...but now that they're done, if they didn't prepare, they're boned hard. This is the year higher ed is feeling some crunches from lower enrollment and the end of some revenue streams of the past few years as well. So it's not entirely shocking corps are as well.

She plays a long game of cold revenge.

I'm still stuck on the visuals. I mean, they have a drill book road map in reutilizing Phantom's Into the Light. Enter from one tunnel, move the corps across the field through the show, and exit the other tunnel! I should stop, but I can't. Maybe there's something I could take for that?

Why not both! Show theme could be the biological processes of using Pepto Bismol. Maybe P&G would sponsor the uniform costs!

After last week, it sorta makes one nervous they haven't.

Which was also tongue in cheek to some degree. But frankly I'm a big fan of what Surf does from keeping it at a scale that's doable during the summer with some great instructional efforts based on what I saw in the lot at Annapolis to things like their mobile music lab going out into the neighborhoods to bring music education into areas in new ways where the schools have long axed such things. People dog them for being small and non-competitive and snark out with "demote them to Open Class" and such. But... they're still here and they're still doing their thing and doing it well.

Nah. Surf gonna come out totally ratchet this year!

wow.

We're at the nexus of "quad players and low brass players" once again.

Ostensibly that commit to the numbers was the reason for having prelims then finals. Particularly when prelims spread over two days (as it does for band comps still). Prelims was less about absolute placement and more about “getting the right 12” for finals where a more granulated head to head approach with a single panel could happen.

There's a significant crossover between low brass and quads players in that way.

I...remember that commercial.

Reading this 7 years later and my brain is all "still the best names in the game"

Yah. This was an Indiana ISSMA annual state contender in my day and when we did do Grand Nats, we were finalists. Although that might be a quality + massive number of band parents who travel well = Finals slot in those days...heh

Lulz. we marched at least 3 if not 4 if I recall. But then we were like a 250+ sized band.

I'm loving the auto translate mangles. "No matter how strong the trumpets beak is..." However, he's killing me with literally pausing every two seconds to go on about something.