UCONN Husky Marching Band
When I started college in 1964 (age 17) I had a boyfriend who played in the band. I sat with the band during football games and had a wonderful time. I approached the band director, Allan Gilespie, and asked him how I could join the band. He asked me what instrument I played. None, as far as bands go. He said he needed more high brass and did I want to learn cornet. Sure. So, I met him the next Monday morning at the band instrument closet and checked out a horn. He gave me lessons and I practiced. I was good enough (although not very good) by the fall of 1965 that I could begin field practice and put on the spiffy navy blue and white uniform.
The band had a standard pregame formation to show off the ROTC color guard, national anthem and fight song (“UCONN Husky, symbol of might to the foe”), but we learned a new halftime show every week during the football season. In those days, a grad student arranged the music and worked out the drills. He (David Maker) drew the formations and steps for each band member on graph paper. We marchers had our music on 4-by-6 pieces of paper mounted in flip books (each page covered with plastic) perched on little music stands screwed to our instruments. We used grease pencils to write in our steps on the spaces above the appropriate measures of the music. Such as eight forward, 16 left, 180 turn etc.)
One of our arrangements,a whole 12-minute halftime show, was from Modeste Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.” The piano piece was arranged for orchestra by Maurice Ravel. Ours was arranged by David Maker.
I was thinking about this and remembering the marching drill as I listened to the Ravel arrangement on MPR a week or so ago.
The “Great Gate of Kiev” is the theme that connects each of the “pictures.” Our arrangement featured the woodwinds playing the softer sections, such as the Oxcart “picture,” with the brasses and percussion marching away fwith our backs to the stands. Then when the Great Gate theme came in, we brasses did a quick 180 with white capes flashing and blared the theme as we marched toward the audience. I remember the first time we did the maneuver seeing people who had taken the opportunity of halftime to hit the concessions dropping their popcorn as we pounced on the bright, loud melody.
It’s interesting how music can invoke memories. It is also interesting that no one has seen the pictures since Ravel. They were lost or destroyed. All we have is the tunes Mussorgsky wrote about them.
mollymiron