PEARCY -- Musicians and dancers of The Cavaliers Drum & Bugle Corps filled Bank of the Ozarks Field at Wolf Stadium on the Lake Hamilton campus Wednesday, getting in formation and perfecting their pieces.
"You're doing a great job pushing through the thick air and the heat," Mike Tarr, the band's visual coordinator, said to them over the press box's intercom system. "Let's keep going."
The Cavaliers Drum & Bugle Corps, a Drum Corps International marching band from Rosemont, Ill., both housed itself and practiced at Lake Hamilton High School all day Wednesday for their competition that night. Aiden Beimer, mellophone player from Denton, Texas, said that LHHS is just one in a long line of schools that his band has used for housing and practice.
"There's a show tonight in Little Rock, so we ended up just going into different schools that could provide housing for us and have a good stadium," he said.
The Cavaliers corps is comprised of 150 young men 16-22 years old from across the country, and three from Japan. They were selected from an audition process that went back as early as November and concluded with their official lineup in May.
The band began practicing May 23 in Indiana.
"(We were) rehearsing about 10 hours a day, and then we hit the road for the past couple of months, just touring and playing shows," Beimer said.
This summer, the Cavaliers traveled with other DCI bands, performing competitively in football stadiums across the country. Wednesday's competition began at 7 p.m. at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock, with the Cavaliers performing at 9:26 p.m. The showdown featured nine competitive marching bands based out of eight different states.
The Cavaliers has been putting on a performance titled "Propaganda" at the different stadiums. Tarr said that the performance has been a hit among his band, saying that they have enjoyed reflecting the show's theme.
"Propaganda can bring people together, it can tear people apart, it can inspire society," Tarr said. "It can do all these different things for us. In marching band these days, a lot of bands have props, so we kind of take a comical stab at props in the play on the word."
Beimer said he has enjoyed touring and performing with the Cavaliers Drum & Bugle Corps this summer.
"It's engaging, it's fun, it's artistic yet athletic," Beimer said. "It's a great time."
Local on 07/28/2016