Klarinet Archive - Posting 000024.txt from 1998/10

From: Shouryu Nohe <jnohe@-----.edu>
Subj: [kl] Eh?
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1998 15:09:03 -0400

Jenna McKenna ( ^_^ ):
>It is very possible to be musical in marching
>band...i've seen it done, but the extra things that go into it, the hype
>and such, make it harder to distingish as music rather than a sport.

I'm VERY surprised to hear you say that, considering where you come from -
UNT considers marching band a high art, just as we do here at NMSU.
Personally, I wasn't impressed with field work, but once your band gets
line up in the stands, or they do a park'n'bark, they sound really good
and VERY musical. Did you know that in 1995, USA Today ranked the
nation's most musical and exicting marching bands? UNT was ranked number
two! (FSU was first, and NMSU was third - no joke!)

We showed up on your doorstep in 1996 to see if it was true - and your
band IS fantastically musical (they oughtta be, since it's 90% MUS
majors). When it came down to it, both of our bands were so strong
musically that I find it a little absurd that you say such things. You
can't go anywhere but to a UNT-NMSU game to hear the most moving
performances of You'll Never Walk Alone (strangely enough, I was the only
one in my band who knew the name of the tune when you played it) and
Salvation is Created - that kind of musicality isn't supposed to exist in
marching bands, but indeed it does - bands like FSU, UNT, and NMSU can't
consider it a sport, and we do everything within our power to ensure that
our spectators DON'T see it in such a fashion.

(NOte - I am not in the PRIDE this year, because it IS indeed a great
drain on time. However, if I wasn't taking applied saxophone and I wasn't
suddenly in symphony, I would gladly do it. Next fall, you can be sure
I'll be back on the field with another Maynard Furgeson/Chuck
Mangione/Chick Corea piece to play.)

J. Shouryu Nohe
http://web.nmsu.edu/~jnohe
Professor of SCSM102, New Mexico State Univ.
--------------------------------------------------------------
"This is a far greater punishment than mankind deserved. This is the
real 'Dead Sea.'" - Fuyutsuki Kozo
"Yet this is a world that has been purified and purged of the
original sin." - Ikari Gendo
"I'd rather live in a world with people, no matter how stained with sin."

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