Preston Scout House
Alumni Band
Preston, Ontario (Canada)
Forty-two years after its last appearance in Lewisburg, Canada's famous Preston Scout House Band will be marching back into the stadium at Bucknell University on July 19, 2008, to perform a field show exhibition during the Cavalcade of Champions drum and bugle corps contest.
Preston Scout House Alumni Band includes many members who also marched on the field at Bucknell in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Horn players and drummers now wear long pants, but the colour guard still wears the tight black shorts, short-sleeved maroon tops, stylish Aussie hats and white gauntlets that gave Scout House such a distinctive look when the original Band was one of the most popular drum and bugle corps in North America.
Scout House is still one of the most popular units in North America. Fans at the Alumni Spectacular concert in Rochester, New York, selected the band as one the top three favorites during the 2006 Drum Corps Associates (DCA) world championship tournament.
Drum corps fans attending the Cavalcade of Champions will tap their toes to many familiar Scout House songs, including the popular theme Waltzing Matilda. The show begins with a drum introduction to Waterloo Fanfare, then the Band steps off playing Colonel Bogey March. Another drum feature leads into Brazil. The traditional standstill concert features a medley of Broadway hits: There's No Business Like Show Business; Tonight, from West Side Story and Music of the Night, from Phantom of the Opera.
The Band marches out of concert playing Oklahoma! followed by a 32 count drum solo leading into one of the Band's most popular numbers, The Wayward Wind. The Maple Leaf Forever ends with a formal colour presentation, with the flags of Canada and the United States flying side by side at centre field.
The drum line's major percussion feature follows the colour presentation, with another short drum introduction then setting the tempo for the fiery Latin rhythms of Poinciana.
The clear, crisp sound of glockenspiels introduces Waltzing Matilda, as the Band moves into position for the final selection, Wish Me Luck, another sentimental favourite from the 1950s, with a reprise of Waterloo Fanfare bringing the field show to a stirring climax. Time permitting, the band will leave the field with their encore piece, Semper Fidelis.
Scout House's return to Lewisburg in 2008 comes at a special time for the Band. It's been 70 years since the bugle band of the 1st Preston Boy Scout Troop began operations in 1938, but that's not the only anniversary that Preston Scout House is celebrating in 2008. This is the 10th performing season for the Alumni Band, and the 15th anniversary of the Scout House Alumni drill team.
Preston Scout House Alumni Band started rehearsals in the fall of 1998 to prepare for a stage concert during the Great Alliance of Seniors (GAS) reunion in Mississauga, Ontario in the spring of 1999. The original intent was to gather alumni members to play that single concert, but it was so well received that Preston Scout House Alumni Band has been on the march ever since.
Since the first performance in 1999, Scout House Alumni Band has performed more than 240 times across Ontario, Quebec, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Connecticut. By the beginning of the 2008 performance season, the Alumni Band had marched in 109 street parades, performed 107 stage concerts and presented 28 field shows.
Even before full alumni band activities began, a Scout House drill team was already appearing at community events, after forming in 1993 to prepare an indoor routine for the 1994 GAS reunion in Cambridge. (The original town of Preston is now part of the City of Cambridge.) The drill team has performed at every GAS reunion since then.
Originally, the band of the 1st Preston Scout Troop wore traditional Boy Scout uniforms. The Alumni Band colour guard still wears the stylized uniform first seen in 1954, after the Band became independent of the Boy Scout organization. The band is named for the building where scout troop meetings, band rehearsals, theatre presentations, youth dances and community events were held, a former brewery stable restored by members of the troop and community volunteers.
In almost 30 years of operation before the original group disbanded in 1967, Preston Scout House Band won more than 80 international, national, provincial and regional titles in performances across the eastern half of the continent from Minnesota through Ontario and Quebec to the Atlantic seaboard. Since its formation in 1998, the Alumni Band has earned the City of Cambridge award for cultural achievement in music, and many parade awards.
Scout House Alumni Band is made up of 106 members, who participate in the full marching band, drill team and Silver Leaves brass ensemble. The 2008 Alumni Band includes 88 male and 18 female members. Slightly more than half the Alumni Band members also marched in the original Preston Scout House Band. Members now come from more than 20 communities across southern Ontario, from London through the Niagara Peninsula and Greater Toronto Area. Over the years, they've been associated with 65 music organizations in Ontario, Alberta, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and England.
The Band's original director, the late Wilf Blum, was one of the first Canadians elected to the World Drum Corps Hall of Fame. Blum and the entire band are members of the City of Cambridge Hall of Fame. Five Alumni Band members are associate members of the World Drum Corps Hall of Fame, the first Canadians selected for that honour. Two Alumni Band members are also members of the GAS board.
The average age of Band members is 60. Some older members marched with the original band as long ago as the late 1940s.
Scout House Alumni Band maintains a tradition of strong commitment to community service. The Band currently supports a number of projects, including music programs at three Cambridge high schools. Last summer, Scout House Alumni Band helped to pay the travel costs of three Ontario junior drum and bugle corps traveling to California to compete in the Drum Corps International (DCI) championships.
Scout House music director, arranger and instructor is John Conrad, who also taught the Band in the 1950s and '60s. Percussion instructor is Tom Conrad, assisted by John Haines and Lee Buckley. Larry Blundell is marching instructor and also writes and teaches the field show drill. Ken Becker is the colour guard instructor. Drum majors are Gary Tones and Larry Blundell. Gary Tones will be the Drum Major at Bucknell Stadium this years and in the sixties, he played trumpet.
The band performed at the Cavalcade of Champions in 1956, 1957, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1963, 1964, 1965, and 1966.
For more information, visit the Preston Scout House Alumni Band's website.