America's largest collegiate marching band... BGSU

[gocsick]

Bowling Green State University... The Falcons with be marching 600 this year . Over a 6x increase since 2022

https://www.bgsu.edu/news/online-media- ... eason.html

That seems absurd to me... Veering into bigger is better than good territory.


Edit: Marching not Matching

[JCTuba67]

Bowling Green State University... The Falcons with be marching 600 this year . Over a 6x increase since 2022

https://www.bgsu.edu/news/online-media- ... eason.html

That seems absurd to me... Veering into bigger is better than good territory.

Actually this is a great thing. It’s proving that people are still interested in marching bands and music. Way to go BGSU. I remember when Ivan worked there and the band had 50 people in it.

Absurd? Get off your high horse.

[Schlitzz]

If Mark Kelly were alive, his head would explode.
Absurd? You betcha.

[bloke]

scholarship money?

Without my glasses, I was reading "collapsible marching band".
At 600, perhaps that's what it actually needs to be.

[AggieDan]

Nobody tell him about the Allen Eagle Escadrille.

[russiantuba]

Jon Waters is a great tubist and conductor (OSU studio alumnus from before my time. Go Buckeyes) and revitalized the marching show creativity when he was the director of TBDBITL. I have a former student starting this year in the BGSU MB, mainly due to his interactions with Jon.

If OSU took every single interested person like BGSU is doing, TBDITL would be easily over 1200 members instead of 228.

As with the Allen marching band mentioned above, bigger isn’t always better.

[bort2.0]

That sounds very expensive

My college marching band was around 250. When we traveled, it took 6 buses and a full size Ryder truck to haul all the equipment. Negotiating budgets with the university and athletic departments was a huge and constant effort.

I can't imagine the costs involved for a band more than twice that size. Plus the uniforms. And instruments. And the logistics of getting everyone in/out/to/from everything. And... Ugh, no thanks.

Oh yeah, then there's the music part of it.

[tofu]

Is Bruce Moss still the Director of Music at Bowling Green?

When my old HS band director & director of Music LaVerne Reimer retired after my senior year in 1976 which was his 25th year (he survived 2 Navy ships sinking in WWII - including Pearl Harbor - my school - 5400 kids with maybe 650 in the music program ) the jazz band & marching band director (Richard Blatti) got the reins of one of the best HS Music programs in the the country. He had been the protege & wunderkind of the late great John Paytner (long time Director of Music) at Northwestern. When Blatti became the HS band director & director of music they then hired Bruce Moss to be his assistant director plus marching band director / freshman band director. Blatti left a couple years later and wound up eventually as the Director of Music at Ohio State - retiring in 2016 -somehow surviving the Flying 69 debacle at OSU.

Bruce Moss (now Dr Moss) then got the reins at my old HS band after Blatti departed as well as getting Verne’s superb Municipal Band that Verne retired from after 25 years plus. I was still in the Muni band for Moss’s first couple years before I left for my current Muni Band because we play year round and our funding is maybe 10x my old band (money talks ). A lot of superb talent then and now in that muni band - including the current principal tuba in Bejing Symphony and the current second trumpet in the CSO -also a graduate of my old HS band. This summer was Moss’s 50th year as Director of the muni band having succeeded Verne who built the very high standards there. For the last 25 years or so they have flown Moss in every week during the summer from Bowling Green to rehearse the band on Wed and conduct the band concert on Thursday night.

[russiantuba]

Is Bruce Moss still the Director of Music at Bowling Green?

When my old HS band director & director of Music LaVerne Reimer retired after my senior year in 1976 which was his 25th year (he survived 2 Navy ships sinking in WWII - including Pearl Harbor - my school - 5400 kids with maybe 650 in the music program ) the jazz band & marching band director (Richard Blatti) got the reins of one of the best HS Music programs in the the country. He had been the protege & wunderkind of the late great John Paytner (long time Director of Music) at Northwestern. When Blatti became the HS band director & director of music they then hired Bruce Moss to be his assistant director plus marching band director / freshman band director. Blatti left a couple years later and wound up eventually as the Director of Music at Ohio State - retiring in 2016 -somehow surviving the Flying 69 debacle at OSU.

Bruce Moss (now Dr Moss) then got the reins at my old HS band after Blatti departed as well as getting Verne’s superb Municipal Band that Verne retired from after 25 years plus. I was still in the Muni band for Moss’s first couple years before I left for my current Muni Band because we play year round and our funding is maybe 10x my old band (money talks ). A lot of superb talent then and now in that muni band - including the current principal tuba in Bejing Symphony and the current second trumpet in the CSO -also a graduate of my old HS band. This summer was Moss’s 50th year as Director of the muni band having succeeded Verne who built the very high standards there. For the last 25 years or so they have flown Moss in every week during the summer from Bowling Green to rehearse the band on Wed and conduct the band concert on Thursday night.

Rich Blatti was the director of the OSU School of Music during my time--he was the associate director of bands until about the year before I got there (which caused an issue with his old position on the hiring process). According to google, Bruce Moss retired in 2024 from BGSU--some of my colleagues in Northwest Ohio who were students of Moss early on went to perform in the retirement concert. Sounds like you had some superb instruction in high school--maybe one of those instances looking back and regretting not listening more (I know I have had several of those, not knowing how good I had it).

[AggieDan]

As with the Allen marching band mentioned above, bigger isn’t always better.

The real bonus that I see for the kids in the Allen case is that they've attained a sort of notoriety in that they're the biggest high school marching band in the United States, I believe. For this they've gotten to travel and take part in some really cool things like the Rose Parade.

Marching band programs in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area are an interesting beast. Lots of new money in the suburbs with new monster-sized schools. Unfortunately, my kids are stuck in the Plano West cluster where the music program has been suffering from lack of funding and they have two 9-10 feeder schools into the Plano West Senior High 11-12.

[russiantuba]

The real bonus that I see for the kids in the Allen case is that they've attained a sort of notoriety in that they're the biggest high school marching band in the United States, I believe. For this they've gotten to travel and take part in some really cool things like the Rose Parade.

Marching band programs in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area are an interesting beast. Lots of new money in the suburbs with new monster-sized schools. Unfortunately, my kids are stuck in the Plano West cluster where the music program has been suffering from lack of funding and they have two 9-10 feeder schools into the Plano West Senior High 11-12.

I grew up in the DFW area, and after I graduated, my high school started playing Allen in football. Plano Schools used to have superb band programs. I am not 40 (yet) and I can remember the famous Hebron High School band was cattle farms when I was growing up.

[AggieDan]

@russiantuba, I think I might not have been clear. Plano ISD does have some great band programs. The sheer number of All-Region players is truly impressive. However, when it comes to marching, the structure of the High School / Senior High School split does negatively affect the marching band programs from a competitive standpoint. Where bigger is often seen as better (until you get to unwieldy) Plano programs are rather hamstrung. The downside that is often mentioned is that freshmen marchers are often sacrificed when you can only write a show for 90% of the expected enrollment to stay on the safe side. But, also being able to pull from 4 years of players as opposed to just 2 means that it's easier to balance the ensemble. One of the years in one of the bands I'm supporting has an ungodly number of saxophone players. The tuba section also is a little anemic at 6, when even my small 3A high school marched 4. It's also truly impressive when we have West Cluster games and the entire Plano West Cluster takes the field for a standstill performance.

[russiantuba]

My high school, now a 6A on the SW side of Dallas was 110 and we had 3 tubas. Arlington Martin just a couple towns over had a varsity and a JV marching. Plano East’s programs were quite good in my day. Spent some time that way when I lived with a family member in the Sachse/Wylie area in undergraduate summers.

The town to the west of me where my director came from marched 500, had about 50 or 70 alternates. Ironically the year before he got there, at a couple of the competitions they finished right above us in finals, and the scores were close. In marching band, small numbers hurt the scores. However, too big and sloppy, doesn’t help.

[AggieDan]

What's really funny is my little 3A school had (during my senior year) 361 students in the high school. That's for grades 9-12. We had roughly 100 students in band. And marched 4 sousaphones every year that I can recall. But, that was back in the late 80s, early 90s. I can recall us having 1 alternate. Everyone else was on the field.

We could never compete with those borderline 4A schools that were popping up in the valley. But, we had more than 2 decades of sweepstakes and placed around 12th in honor band one year.

It just amazes me that these larger DFW area schools don't have huge numbers when we pulled better than 25% of the student population.

We also walked uphill in the snow both to and from school. So, you know... Things were different back then.

[russiantuba]

I found a lot of smaller schools worked with people in multiple activities. I found my school didn’t except for very special circumstances. Basically, you were expected to devote yourself to said activity, and each program saw themselves as superior. We did share with choir reasonably well, but you could tell the directors didn’t get along with each other and would complain during a choir event when the band was missing people. Our choir was much bigger than our band.

Back when 5A was the biggest, my high school had just gone to 5A when I was in 7th and 8th grade, but we still didn’t dominate in marching, but we had a quality focus. If you’re familiar with Duncanville—we were the town south, and they were 4-5 times our size, required lessons, etc. My first marching band director went there to be the marching band director before my sophomore year and did well with them. I say it to this date—our issue was never quality, it was always numbers.

[AggieDan]

I'm actually rather familiar with Duncanville. Southwestern Bell told my dad one day (years after my parents had divorced) that if he wanted his next paycheck, it was waiting for him at his desk in One Bell Plaza in Dallas. So, he moved to Duncanville from San Antonio. He bought a house near 67 and S. Cockrell Hill. Trips between DFW and Corpus Christi during the summer were pretty standard for me growing up. He did push for us to move to Duncanville with the expectation that Duncanville schools could provide more opportunity than a small 3A school could.

Luckily for me, I went to a REALLY good school with good band and math programs. Also, it was mom's home town where my extended family made up 1% of the high school population and other members of the family worked for the school district or were on the school board. Then the fact that a fair number of my teachers either went to school with my mom, taught my mom, or were in the next pew at Sunday morning mass made it a really hard environment to be a delinquent.

It definitely helped get into college, though. If you had a pulse you could at least warm the bench for most sports, which looked GREAT on college applications. But, as my academics and band took off, I dropped athletics. I'm too freaking white to be great at sports.

And that is one thing about smaller schools. You can dabble in EVERYTHING until you find what you're actually kind of decent at. And you don't have to be a prodigy. I'm a decent player. But, I'm well aware of my limitations. My ex-wife can go into GREAT detail on those, if you'd like. I did, however, have a pretty good shot at TMEA All State my senior year, but that was also the first year of ATSSB. I thought I had to choose between the two paths. Again, I'm no prodigy. So.... MAYBE make it past area to get to state TMEA or roll the dice on this new ATSSB thing. I found out two weeks before District that I *could* also try out for TMEA, scrambled to learn the etudes and made All-Region. But... It's a good thing I had chosen to focus on ATSSB from the start. I ended up as the first principal tubist in ATSSB All-State Band history.