Cavaliers horn line brings outdoor fundamentals inside to Midwest Clinic

On Thursday, December 19, The Cavaliers’ horn line was featured during an educational session presented by members of the corps’ brass staff and other guest presenters at the Midwest Clinic International Band and Orchestra Conference in Chicago.

The Midwest Clinic is annually the largest gathering of instrumental directors in the world, this year attracting some 19,000 attendees to the McCormick Place convention center for five days of educational clinic sessions, workshops, concerts and exhibitions.

The horn line, comprised of 2019 and 2020 members of The Cavaliers’ brass ensemble, was featured during a session titled “Go Play Outside! — A Contextual Discussion on the Benefits, Drawbacks, and Stigmas Associated with Outdoor Brass Playing.”

Primarily presented by Michael Martin, Chris Martin, Freddy Martin, Drew Dickey, and Kevin LeBoeuf, the clinic attracted an overflow audience, far more than planners had expected, with many attendees listening in from the convention center hallway.

“To have the idea for this session accepted by the Midwest was a huge compliment to our guys, most importantly, the students and the hard work that they put in the last couple of years when we brought this new staff together,” said Michael Martin, who plays trumpet with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in addition to serving as The Cavaliers’ brass composer and arranger. “It's the best of the best who present here, so we were honored, flattered, and humbled to be able to do it.”

The Martin family is no stranger to drum corps; Freddy founded Spirit of Atlanta and was its director during its highly successful formative years, and both Michael and Chris marched in the corps. Chris serves as principal trumpet at the New York Philharmonic and is on the faculty of the Julliard School of Music. Drew Dickey and Kevin LeBoeuf serve as Cavaliers brass caption coordinator and caption manager, respectively, most recently helping to lead the line to a top-three finish at the DCI World Championships.

The Martins also invited Gail Williams, on the faculty of Northwestern University and a former member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, to participate in the session, in addition to Colin Williams, trombonist for the New York Philharmonic and a faculty member of the Manhattan School of Music, and Mike Roylance, tubist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and a member of the faculty of Boston University.

All of these individuals worked with the corps’ brass section during an off-season rehearsal camp a year ago, underscoring one of the fundamental tenets of The Cavaliers’ educational process.

“These individuals came in to our January camp a year ago, and did master classes all day and saw what we were about and really appreciated what our students are doing and how the staff teaches them,” Michael Martin said. “That's always our hope as educators, that we're teaching our drum corps students things that are going to help them in the rest of their lives, musically and otherwise, in ways that professionals in those fields would be proud of.

 

Thursday’s session began with a performance of Michael Martin’s “Zero to Sixty,” an exciting extended tour-de-force fanfare performed by The Cavaliers’ brass section with guest musicians Chris Martin, Michael Martin, Gail Williams, Colin Williams, and Mike Roylance.

A recurring theme to the clinic session was that brass performance outside should be treated no different from how students are trained to perform inside a concert hall. In fact, the marching arts can and should be utilized to create better brass players.

“The quality of teaching [in drum corps]; it’s exactly the same things that I tell my students at the Juilliard School,” Chris Martin said. “They’re the same principles I practice with every day at home — quality of sound, quality of articulation, flexibility, strength, beauty, and all of that contributing to musicality and song. That's what drum corps teaches, that’s what we try to do at the Philharmonic, and that's what I teach my students. It's the same philosophy.”

Guiding the session, Michael Martin presented five fundamentals that need to be addressed to achieve this goal, with additional input from the other presenters showing ways to work on, build and perfect those essentials.

View the complete presentation deck from the Cavaliers' “Go Play Outside!” session

The horn line also performed “Adagietto” from Gustav Mahler’s “Symphony No. 5,” a work that will serve as the corps’ chorale for the 2020 DCI season. Hosted right before the holidays, the clinic session ended with all the guest performers joining the horn line in a rousing encore performance of “Jingle Bells/The Dreidel Song/We Wish You a Merry Christmas/Deck the Halls.”