2013 Drum Corps International Tour Schedule

Drum Corps International’s Premier Events are a collection of some of the most prestigious stops on the annual DCI Tour. Generally produced in larger, collegiate and professional sports stadium facilities on key weekends throughout the summer months, these events draw some of the biggest crowds of the season. Among the highlights of early-season events will be a brand new show in Lexington, Ky., on Friday, June 21. Shows in Stanford, Calif. (June 22) and Muncie, Ind. (June 28) will finish out Premier Events scheduled in June. A return to Minneapolis on Saturday, July 13, will feature the largest lineup of corps on the DCI Tour to date, including 18 of 23 World Class corps. Saturday, July 20 at the Alamodome in San Antonio will be the very first time in 2013 that fans get to see the entire lineup of World Class corps compared on a single results sheet. The only other event outside of the World Championships to feature every World Class corps in one night of competition, the DCI Atlanta Southeastern Championship, will take place on a different day of the week in 2013, coming to the Georgia Dome on Sunday, July 28. “Running up against a citywide event that will be using all of the convention facilities including the Georgia Dome through our usual Saturday date, we had to push this year’s event back a day,” DCI Director of Events Susan Kuehnhold said. “Moving the Southeastern Championship to Sunday, however, opened up the opportunity for us stage a brand new and exciting event the day before.” That first-time event, DCI North Alabama, will take place on the campus of Alabama A&M University in Huntsville on Saturday, July 27. A 14-corps lineup is scheduled to perform at the 21,000-seat Louis Crews Stadium. The DCI Eastern Classic in Allentown, Pa., will once again finish out DCI’s Premier Event series Aug. 2-3. This longstanding competition annually marks one of the last stops of all World Class corps before they turn their buses toward Indianapolis for the World Championships. “Connecting the dots” between the schedule of Premier Events will be the bulk of the 2013 DCI Tour schedule. These sanctioned events in cities like Olathe, Kan., Cedarburg, Wis., and Fairfield, Ohio, serve as important performance opportunities and waypoints for the corps as they crisscross the country from one tour stop to the next. “The members of our Tour Event Network who produce, promote and manage those events help make the entire DCI Tour happen,” says Kuehnhold. “We’re very fortunate to have committed partners who help lay the groundwork for our corps to help them safely move from city to city across the country.”