The director of a renown and bugle corps described the upcoming Friday show at Millbrook’s Stanhope Elmore High School as a sort of all-in-one Broadway, circus and marching band performance.
There will be added significance for both the audience and the performers of the South Wind Drum and Bugle Corps show in Foshee-Henderson Stadium.
Director Lawrence LeClaire said it would be a sort of homecoming for the organization.
“Way back in the ‘80s and the ‘90s the majority of our rehearsal camps were held at Stanhope Elmore High School,” said LeClaire “This is the first time that we’ll be back there since the mid ‘90s.”
He said he practiced there during his own time in the group in 1991, though at that time the field was likely called Conrad Henderson Stadium.
On Friday he said there would be roughly 111 students from eight states who have spent their summer at the Mobile-based camp performing, with at least two local performers from SEHS and Wetumpka High School and several from the Montgomery area.
Trumpet player David Persky will take to his high school’s field that afternoon, along with WHS percussionist William Moncrief.
The gates are scheduled to open around 5 p.m. and the show will start at 7 p.m. with performances lasting until around 10 p.m.
LeClaire said there would be six corps units playing, five junior groups ages 14-21 and one all-age corp from Birmingham each getting about 20 minutes on the field.
As a drum and bugle corp he said the lineup would consist of a percussion battery with its snare, pair and bass drums plus a symbol section and a horn line of trumpets, mellophones, tubas and baritones.
“It’s kind of the voices of the choir, if you will,” LeClaire said.
There will also be a color guard component, which he said would display colors reflecting the mood of the corps’ performance.
He described the process the band members went through in preparation for their spate of summer concerts.
Students from as far away as Dallas and Arkansas gathered for the camp in Mobile where he said they temporarily move in to either a school or rehearsal facility.
Starting their days at 7 a.m., LeClaire said they would practice until 10-11 p.m. each night.
“It’s a marching band on steroids … it’s professional,” LeClaire said. “If you’re a marching band person you don’t get enough of it in football season … a subgroup of these kids have to have more.”
Tickets to Friday’s show are available online at www.southwind.org and LeClaire said the availability was dwindling.
“Tickets are going quickly actually,” LeClaire said.
At roughly $10 he said only general admission seats were still available and could be bought at the gate, as well as online if any remained.
