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Six years ago, the Arizona Academy Drum
and Bugle corps was little more than a
vision and a dream buried in the brain
of a former Corona del Sol High School
band director.
So it’s hard to believe that just this
month, in only its sixth year of
existence, its third competitive season
and its very first appearance in finals
competition, the Academy was crowned
world champion in an activity long
dominated by decades-old powerhouses.
Interestingly, the corps’ victory wasn’t
much of a surprise by the time the
finals approached. The Academy had
traveled the country building intense
hype for itself but still shattering
anyone’s highest expectations with every
performance.
The Tempe-based group entered finals
undefeated in first place and was able
to maintain its lead over several
competitors who spent the season nipping
at the Academy’s heals, several times
scoring within two-tenths of a point of
the Academy’s score.
“It was such stiff competition all the
way in the last couple weeks that you
just didn’t know what was going to
happen,” said Mark Richardson, director.
“It’s really a nice cherry to the top of
the experience to come out on top.”
With many decades of drum corps
tradition and history, no one can say
for sure if the Academy’s rapid and
enormous success is unprecedented, “but
I can’t remember anybody in the history
of this thing coming out for the first
time and winning,” Richardson said.
The corps’ success was a hot topic of
conversation in the small but
dedicated—some might say fanatical—pool
of Drum Corps International fans and
followers, many of whom traveled long
distances to watch the World
Championships in Madison, Wisc., the
first week in August.
“That’s been the most exciting part
about the whole thing, how the drum
corps community and the fan base has
really embraced our group and our kids
and our product we put on the field,”
Richardson said. “In their applause, in
their conversations outside the
stadiums. Positive feedback; people just
send random emails saying
‘congratulations, we appreciate what
you’re doing.’”
“It’s just cool to know that people will
pay money and go to ridiculous lengths
and travel long distances just to see us
perform,” he said.
“People came from all over,” said Mike
Orrantia, a Corona graduate and Kyrene
Corridor resident now attending the
University of Arizona.
Marching band on steroids
A drum and bugle corps is a lot like a
high school marching band: Young people
play instruments and march drill
patterns on a football field. But drum
corps is an intense summer program,
requiring participants to attend 12- to
13- hour rehearsals six days per week
nearly all summer.
Their program difficulty is
significantly enhanced as the
performers, ages 14 to 21 travel the
country rehearsing in small towns and
big cities, performing for enthusiastic
crowds of drum corps fans and local high
school musicians, reaching a level of
near perfection by the end of the
season.
Eighteen Kyrene Corridor students joined
some of the strongest performers at high
schools and colleges from around
Arizona, and even a few from out of
state to form the 2006 corps. The
Academy from a traditional marching band
largely in the time commitment and
athleticism required.
“The difference is the attitude and the
passion that comes across when you get
135 people together who are extremely
driven to achieve at the highest level,”
Richardson said.
Pushing through the challenges of the
Valley’s heat, the Academy held most of
its in-state rehearsals in the Kyrene
Corridor, filling the air with drum
beats and chords at the Tempe Sports
Complex adjacent to the Arizona
Cardinals’ training facility at Warner
and Hardy.
It turned out to be a strategic location
for the corps. After noticing the
Academy rehearsing next door all summer,
the Cardinals’ entertainment coordinator
approached Richardson about performing
at a half-time show in the team’s new
Glendale stadium, giving the 135 corps
members the opportunity to perform for
an enormous crowd in the brand new
stadium. The rehearsal facility is also
located in an industrial neighborhood,
minimizing the annoyance to neighbors.
Richardson thanked profusely the Tempe
Parks and Recreation Department, saying
the City of Tempe has gone out of its
way to assist the organization, and the
ability to rehearse at the Tempe Sports
Complex was instrumental in the corps’
success.
Roughing it
They may be World Champions, but the
Academy’s members certainly do not live
a life of luxury on tour. They sleep on
overnight bus rides or, on a good night,
the floor of a high school gymnasium.
They shower and brush their teeth in the
gym bathrooms, rarely spending two
nights at the same site. High school
band students often show up to watch
their rehearsals and learn from the
corps members’ intricate skill, intense
concentration and dedicated work ethic.
“It’s a once in a lifetime experience
for us,” one band member told his local
newspaper in Milan, Tenn., where the
Academy rehearsed in July. “We get a
chance to learn from the best and to see
the greater standards they set for
themselves.”
This year’s tour brought the Academy to
several competitions in California as
well as others in Texas, Arkansas,
Tennessee, Indiana and Wisconsin. The
Academy won them all with their show “Danzón,”
a unique Latin style dance designed to
represent a piece of Arizona’s culture
and heritage on the national stage as
Academy became the state’s first drum
corps to compete in finals competition
in more than a decade.
“There were elements that were extremely
difficult,” Richardson said. “Musically,
particularly. It was one of the hardest
musical books out there for any drum
corps.”
One corps member said he enjoyed the
unfamiliar music.
“The more you listen to drum corps, the
more similar it starts to sound,”
Orrantia said. “I would even consider it
its own specific genre. It’s kind of
nice to bring more unfamiliar music to
the activity. The crowd responded very
nicely. I was fun to perform too.
Difficult, but fun.”
An expensive endeavor
But taking 135 young people and their
staff on an extended cross-country tour
is an expensive endeavor, one that often
bankrupts drum corps, particularly the
startups like Academy. For that reason,
Richardson has taken a slow and
deliberate “baby step” approach in order
to ensure long-term financial stability.
The corps’ first three years were a
standup music ensemble, performing at
various community events like a
Diamondbacks game and Fourth of July
celebration. In June 2004, the Academy
stepped onto the field as a competitive
unit for the first time in California,
extending the tour length and distance
in 2005 and finally reaching finals
competition in 2006.
“It’s worked really well, in that each
year it seems we’ve gotten progressively
better,” Richardson said. “We’ve never
had to take a step back and recover from
financial losses so it’s been growing
and growing ever sense.”
The next baby step will likely be
another step up in show difficulty,
Richardson said, and the corps will make
a push to improve its own fundraising
efforts and visibility. The ultimate
goal, one to five years away, is to make
the jump from division II to division I,
where the Academy would have a greatly
extended tour lasting most of July and
face extremely stiff competition against
some of the world’s best young
musicians.
Without an affiliated school or district
to provide financial or logistical
support, the corps relies entirely on
its own fundraising efforts. The primary
fundraiser is the Southwest Corps
Connection, a Valley drum corps
competition organized by Academy
volunteers that brings some of the
nation’s top corps.
Other funds come from a Memorial Day
benefit concert, a benefit dinner and
miscellaneous smaller fundraisers as
well as grants from the City of Tempe
and non-profit organizations.
Academy members pay $1800 for the summer
of touring, which covers about half of
the expenses, Richardson said. With 135
members, that puts the total tour cost
at close to half a million dollars.
Since the AAPA does not want to raise
the cost to participants, the corps’
future advancement is contingent upon
the organization’s own fundraising
success.
The Academy’s championship victory,
reputation and extended tour has already
cashed in for the organization through a
significant spike in souvenir sales.
“We have seen a lot of emails, messages,
letters and comments from people on the
street that have seen the show or have
been following what we’ve been doing and
have become fans of the organization,”
he said. “I would hope that that would
turn into financial support” down the
road.
A childhood vision
The Academy is the 31-year-old
Richardson’s own brainchild. Growing up
he watched his father, Bill Richardson,
direct the band program at Corona del
Sol High School and earn esteem as one
of Arizona’s finest music educators. His
father introduced Mark Richardson to
drum corps competitions early in life.
Without an Arizona corps to perform
with, he joined the Blue Devils from
Concord, Calif., and won the division I
championships in 1996.
“As I was growing up I’d always imagine
going on vacation, traveling across the
country,” he said. “I’d imagine
rehearsing a corps in different
locations and think, ‘How cool would it
be to rehearse a corps here?’”
By 2000, Richardson was working as a
part time assistant band director with
his dad at Corona. A group of Corona
band parents and area drum corps
enthusiasts, were excited by the idea of
bringing a drum corps back to Arizona
and used their own expertise to help
Richardson form the Arizona Academy of
the Performing Arts.
There were lawyers, doctors and
marketing experts in the group who
helped to create, fund and promote the
non-profit organization. From there, the
Academy grew to be the world
championship organization it is today.
When Bill Richardson retired in 2003,
Mark took over the Corona band program,
ultimately stepping down in May to run
the AAPA and the Academy full-time.
The Academy is unique in the drum corps
arena because the vast majority of its
members live in-state. Most large corps
recruit from a wider region in an
attempt to attract the highest possible
talent.
Lofty goals
Despite the Academy’s early success—the
corps remains undefeated throughout its
entire existence—the corps aims for
loftier goals than mere medals and
championship rings.
With a key goal being the overall
enhancement of music education in
Arizona, Richardson said he hopes the
corps keeps true to its values and its
emphasis on recruiting Arizona students
as it grows.
“The members that we train also return
to where they’re going to school or
instructing so that (passion, precision
and commitment) gets spread to the
communities in Arizona so that it has a
positive impact outside of just our
organization,” Richardson said. “It
makes Arizona a better place for music
and in turn would help the Academy”
because its feeder music programs would
be strengthened.
An even stronger Richardson goal is to
“provide opportunities for our kids to
grow as people,” as is a goal of all
drum corps, Richardson said. But the
Academy differs from other corps in the
method by which the staff goes about
achieving that goal.
“We always try to treat the members as
if they’re professionals. We like to
think that we treat them as equal
partners in the process of learning, and
their input and energy is as important
as the staff members’ input and energy
so that it’s an environment of teamwork
between instructor, volunteer, student.”
And with such rapid and significant
success, the staff strongly emphasizes
humility amongst the members.
“We also try to teach the kids to be
humble, no matter how successful, no
matter how thick their track record of
winning becomes,” Richardson said.
“Always try to approach other teams with
open arms. Be friendly, never look past
the fact that you’re a human being.”
It seems to be working. One internet
user claiming to have a son in an
opposing corps posted on the online
forum at www.drumcorpsplanet.com.
“Spoke with my son last night…they have
spent this week with Academy, and says
they have been all class at housing and
show sites. Lots of vocal encouragement
between the two corps whenever they pass
each other.”
Orrantia said he’d never forget “seeing
the final outcome; everyone’s sweat,
everyone’s tears, everyone’s emotions.” |
