By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The Falcon Marching Band, one of the biggest in the land, will be the biggest musical ensemble marching through the heart of Dublin as Ireland celebrates St. Patrick’s Day on March 17.
Just over 300 students will board three flights on Wednesday morning heading to Ireland in the first international trip in the band’s 101 year history. Add to that another cargo plane with the band’s instruments and a plane full of family and friends to cheer them on.
Band Director Jon Waters said about 18 months ago, officials from the parade, the largest in St. Patrick’s honor, called to invite the Falcon Marching Band to participate.
So, during fundamentals camp in the summer of 2023, at the end of his remarks to all the new and returning members, he announced: “We’re going to Dublin!”
Everyone from Waters all through the ranks was excited.
“It speaks to the core of my educational philosophy,” said the band director, now in his third year at the helm of the band. “I think every BG student should leave this university with two pieces of paper: one a diploma and two a passport. This allows a couple hundred students to fulfill that.”
Drum major Madison Allman is one of the students for whom this is her first time leaving the continent. She will celebrate her 21st birthday in Dublin the day before the parade.
Not only will the band perform, they will have a chance to see castles, the Blarney Stone, and other landmarks.
Hannah Baran, who plays piccolo, said that being a “bookworm” she is especially thrilled to visit the library at Trinity College.
Allman, a business major with a concentration in information systems, said fitting in rehearsal time in the spring semester, when the marching band doesn’t usually meet, has taken effort. “Getting together and keeping music up and practicing, and getting to march, all the time working around spring schedule has been a challenge.”
Waters used the practice times for the athletic bands, which play for hockey and basketball games, to rehearse the marching band.
On Sunday night, the band assembled in the Perry Field House on campus for a final rehearsal before flying to Ireland.
During the parade, the band will play “Stars and Stripes Forever” by John Philip Sousa and Paul Murtha’s arrangement “I’m Shipping Up to Boston,” the hit by the Boston-based Irish punk rock band the Drop-Kick Murphys.
Then they will play “Danny Boy” at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
As a piccolo player, the Sousa march is a challenge, Baran said. The piece has a famous solo for piccolo that the entire piccolo section will play while marching. “I’m not a music major so being able to challenge myself musically within the marching band is very exciting,” the forensic science major said. She also plays in the athletic band.
At its peak during the fall, third-quarters of the 425-member band were not music majors.
The 300 or so students traveling to Ireland are each paying $3,500 to cover the cost, Waters said.
He said that because they started the process so early, there have been no hitches in getting passports. “Our study abroad office has been hugely helpful.”
He added, “this whole project is a ton of moving parts, buses and hotels and transfers to and from the airport and European style buses versus American buses and shipping crates for all the instruments.”
And on the way back, the band members will be hauling a ton of new memories.
Locally, the community can watch the parade live at 8:30 a.m. EST on March 17 on WBGU-PBS’s CreateTV subchannel and online at WBGU.org.
