Download of the Week: 2003 Cadets

“Our Favorite Things” was the Cadets’ present to drum corps fans, inspired by past hits from corps that pushed the envelope in sophistication and entertainment over the years, including Santa Clara Vanguard, the Madison Scouts and the Cadets themselves. The pre-show was based on the popular hit, “My Favorite Things,” from “The Sound of Music.” Visually, quite a bit of curvilinear drill moved into a traditional left side entrance from a front built along a yard line, much like in the very early years of Drum Corps International and before. This set up Clifton Williams’ “Fanfare and Allegro,” performed by Santa Clara Vanguard in 1972, 1984 and the DCI Championship year of 1973. When Williams first wrote the work in 1954, it was generally regarded as being too difficult for many bands to perform. But when the composition won the first American Bandmasters Association Ostwald Award for best original band literature in 1956, Williams’ career took off and elementary school band director and Vanguard founder Gail Royer decided one day it would be the perfect piece for Santa Clara Vanguard to prove what was musically possible on the football field. Sometimes dissonant, sometimes martial in character, mostly modern and individualistic in nature, the piece forever changed contemporary wind literature in the concert hall and in drum corps. The Cadets added their own brand of flex drill and quick-paced evolutions, updating the visual nature of the piece. Malague?±a was already an established trademark of the Madison Scouts, who played the piece in 1963, 1965, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1996 and the DCI Championship year of 1988. The Cadets’ version combined traditional elements of the piece with versions by the Stan Kenton Band, a symphonic rendition by Morton Gould and Percy Faith’s dance-tinged version.