Band Day

From the stats of Horn Matters we know we have readers worldwide. The term “Band Day” is going to mean different things to different readers, depending where you are.

In terms of Arizona yesterday the term Band Day refers to marching band contest at Arizona State University. This was the 61st annual edition of this event. I first attended the ASU Band Day back in 2006, as reported on in this post. To that I have a few points to add.

One general point–it is great to see the stands nearly full of people there wanting to hear music. Most of the shows I saw were heavily toward classical music and the crowd was into it.

I heard the last group of bands perform, which are from some of the largest high schools in Arizona. On the whole they all did a nice job. On the down side, even these large schools did not have large numbers of middle brass. The tuba count is an easy way to estimate groups. The biggest group had 12 tubas but only maybe eight mellophones. I believe all the middle brass may have been on mellophone, B-flat marching horns seem to be more of a rarity in our area, especially now that ASU has switched over to mellophones. Sometimes you could tell the mellos were really over blowing their instruments because the section was so small and they needed to bring the line out. Several shows had short mellophone feature solos which were great to hear.

The Arizona State University Sun Devil Marching Band is the largest ever fielded in Arizona, with nearly 400 members and a line of 22 mellophones, only two of them music majors. I did not count how many tubas are in the band but walking away I overheard someone say they had 25 tubas on the field which I can easily believe. Their show was the music of Queen and they ended with a crowd pleasing rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody. And yes I could hear the mellos and they did a great job. Big sound! Very impressive.

One somewhat random footnote would be that one of the judges was hornist J. D. Shaw! He does get around.

On the whole the lasting impression is a combination of that big cheering crowd and remembering that I was one of those players down on the field at some marching band contests in Kansas back in the late 1970s. Days like this keep me optimistic that there are others out there in similar circumstances that will take up the cause of horn playing in a big way.