Spotlight of the Week: 2014 Carolina Crown

The 2014 Drum Corps International World Championships ended with the undefeated Blue Devils scoring a record score of 99.650 in the Finals competition with “Felliniesque.”

Bluecoats passed up The Cadets to take second place with “Tilt.” Santa Clara Vanguard and the Madison Scouts introduced trombones for the frist time in DCI competition, and The Cavaliers took advantage of this new “any brass” rule to feature a concert euphonium.

Blue Stars celebrated the corps’ 50th anniversary with a show that saw some color guard members wheeled onto the field while encased in bubble wrap, while the Boston Crusaders’ color guard performed behind “Animal House” pig masks.

After winning the DCI World Championship title the year before, Carolina Crown finished in fifth place with “Out of This World,” a show inspired by the exploration of outer space.

Watch Carolina Crown's "Out of This World" on Blu-ray disc.

The first part of the production was about going into space, followed by a middle section representing the isolation of being far from Earth, and a final section expressing the relief and triumph of coming home. While the horns and percussion wore teal-colored pants, the color guard wore purple, the color of the corps’ pants from the previous year that generated much discussion.

The show opened with vocalists singing the introduction to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” superimposed over narration of the preparation for the launch into space. This 1969 song was released just five days before the launch of Apollo 11, which placed the first men on the moon.

 

Carolina Crown’s brass players came to the front of the field during the loud percussive sounds of lift-off, with the color guard serving as the rocket rising into space up the 50-yard line. Upon reaching the front, the horns launched into Amin Bhatia’s “Interstellar Suite,” a 1987 “synthphonic” orchestral work created entirely with analog synths and an extensive use of multi-track recording.

Throughout the show, four trampolines helped the corps defy the laws of gravity to express the weightlessness in space. The circular trampolines, also utilized as stages for brass soloists, could be considered part of the cluster of planets referenced by several tarps set across the field.

The first to use the trampolines were four flag spinners from the color guard, immediately followed by eight trumpet players who bounced while playing their motif. The piece ended with the brash stiletto-like rhythmic stabs from the end of Gustav Holst’s “Mars” from “The Planets.”

Next, the brass players ran to a tight sphere in the center of the field for the beginning of Evelyn Glennie’s “Shadow Behind the Sun,” the second track of her entirely improvised 1999 album of the same name. Crown named this section of the show, “Out of This World,” featuring percussionists playing on car mufflers as Glennie had done. A UFO was referenced in the narration, followed by discs being tossed across the field, with atmospheric glistening provided by ethereal sustained brass parts.

The horn line consisted of trumpets and mellophones playing the same pattern of notes, but split so that it was played sequentially, creating a reverb effect. The only electronics during this segment were two synthesizers playing the two chords sung by the women’s chorus at the very end of “Neptune, the Mystic,” the final movement of Gustav Holst’s “The Planets.” The horns then came together in a staggered diagonal line to play the rhythm from the end of “Jupiter,” also from “The Planets.”

The next musical selection, German synth-pop/singer Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom,” came off the artist’s “Error in the System” album of 1983. It was inspired by the earlier David Bowie selection utilized by the corps. The horns gathered in the center of the field to execute a series of outer space drill formations, such as a star and a nebula swirl.

 

Michael Giacchino wrote, “There’s No Place Like Home,” for the ABC television series, “Lost.” This emotional ballad was utilized by Crown to demonstrate the loneliness of being in space. A lone vibraphone emitted a snippet of “Space Oddity,” followed by the entire horn line proclaiming the same melody.

A triumphant statement at the end of the Giacchino piece was followed by a short percussion mallet snippet from the chorale of Holst’s “Jupiter,” resulting in mission control telling Major Tom that contact had been established and that he could now come home. This was immediately followed by Philip Sparke’s “Perihelion – Closer to the Sun,” written in 2013 for brass band, the title referring to the date of the Earth’s perihelion, when the planet is closest to the sun.

Combined with Sparke’s piece, another brass band work, Paul Lovatt-Cooper’s “Vitae Aeternum,” Latin for “Eternal Life,” captured the essence of Major Tom’s successful re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere. A heroic restatement of the “Space Oddity” theme accompanied the corps forming its traditional crown-shaped logo around a swarm of flags, with mission control announcing, “Welcome home, Major Tom.”

Some critics may have thought visually, that this Carolina Crown production was too busy. However, in retrospect, it may have been that the universe was just too small.

2014 DCI World Championship Finals on Blu-ray Disc

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Michael Boo was a member of the Cavaliers from 1975-1977. He has written about the drum corps activity for more than 35 years and serves as a staff writer for various Drum Corps International projects. Boo has written for numerous other publications and has published an honors-winning book on the history of figure skating. As an accomplished composer, Boo holds a bachelor's degree in music education and a master's degree in music theory and composition. He resides in Chesterton, Indiana.