After the third visit from the Atherton police, the Santa Clara
Vanguard Drum & Bugle Corps decided it would have to split up its
outdoor rehearsal at Menlo College...A neighbor might call in a tornado warning...It's blisteringly loud...For 28 consecutive days, the Vanguard has been moving around
California, staying one step ahead of all the noise complaints while
rehearsing "Appalachian Spring," the complex 11-minute Aaron Copland
masterpiece, as their entry in the competition...A standard day of practice is three four-hour shifts, starting at 8 a.m. and ending at 10 p.m...The intensity is almost scary...and it's classy and professional....A lot of adrenaline junkies do drum corps...She's only had to be rushed to the emergency room once, when she took a saber tip to the skull...On this day she is wearing a boxer's welt over her right eye, having
been hit by her own flag while learning the Martha Graham-inspired
modern dance accompaniment to "Appalachian Spring"...Both will come in handy with the color guard, which she describes as "dance, with danger"...
I saw Santa Clara Vanguard invade small-town Indiana in the seventies, playing Buddy Rich's Channel One Suite. Or was it Blue Devils who played such jazz and Vanguard who played classical? Last year's show was Adams/Glass/Talvin Singh/Whitacre, so perhaps my memory is wrong. Regardless, I also remember being super impressed with the people around that time who "graduated" from Madison Scouts ("You'll never walk alone...").
And it's hard to believe it's been almost six years since I linked to Musings of a Music Majorwho suggested drum corps can be too avant-garde that drum corps sometimes tries to bill "a very nice show of chamber music as some kind of higher concept."
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