Posted by Jay Bertolet on November 13, 1999 at 23:53:43:
In Reply to: Re: Performance Major and Marching Band? posted by Marching Band Director on November 13, 1999 at 23:22:57:
Are you SURE you really are a "marching band director"? I guess I find your insults completely uncalled for. I didn't see a single post in this thread that denigrated marching bands in any way. In fact, it was just the opposite! Every poster relayed positive aspects involved with marching band.
But that isn't the worst of it. What you're saying, that marching bands give a music program the visibility that provides funding, is a flawed and incorrect argument. The college I teach at, Florida International University, has no marching band. In fact, we don't even have a football team. Yet our enrollment has gone up 400% in the last 3 years and our fundraising has skyrocketed to the point that we were able to build a brand new performance and rehearsal facility that opened 2 years ago. All of this was accomplished by the work we've done OFF the field and on the concert stage.
If you want to site specific examples to back up your outrageous claims, please feel free to do so. But don't vaguely belittle the work of the "tuba elite" both in the teaching studio and on the concert stage. All of my students study with me because they want to. I do no advertising about my teaching and all the public sees of it are my students and how well they play. And the concert-going public that pays for tickets to hear me play does so because of the product they get, not because they ever marched a day in their life.
But hey, that's just my opinion...