LEBANON, Indiana — Travis Larson and his team of brass instructors were brand new to the Blue Stars in 2020. But they were making waves.
In what started as a “normal” offseason, Larson and his team began implementing the program that had paid dividends for them with past students, ensembles and horn lines. They knew what they were doing, and it was working.
But for the vast majority of Larson’s tenure as Blue Stars brass caption head, outside of a small handful of audition camps and an abbreviated 2021 spring training and summer season, his horn line has been completely virtual.
That’s meant Zoom rehearsals. It’s meant varied sound quality — electronically-speaking. It’s meant barriers. It’s meant adapting.
But make no mistake, at Blue Stars’ March 11-13 brass camp, when he was finally able to hear his corps’ 2022 brass section play together for the first time ever — the horn line that would be featured in his instructional team’s first competitive season with the La Crosse, Wisconsin corps — it was all worth it.
BLUE STARS GET THE CORPS BACK TOGETHER, HOLD FIRST WEEKEND CAMP SINCE 2020
“These kids are ready; they've been ready for this moment,” Larson said. “We've been hyping (the brass camp) up to them to get them moving through the preparation process with a little bit more motivation. It's really nice that we have this opportunity to kind of see where we're at as a horn line.”
2021 was a foretaste. After the 2020 season had been shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it wasn’t until July 2021 that the Blue Stars horn line started playing together in-person, during brief preseason training for the abbreviated DCI Celebration Tour.
But, while unforgettable, it was short-lived.
The full audition season, spring training and summer tour set to be on the table in 2022? That’s more like it.
“This is our first competitive season with Blue Stars as a brass staff,” Larson said. “So, we're really excited to see how our systems are going to stack up with all the other drum corps, and we're looking forward to going head-to-head with everyone this summer.”
Even despite the joys of in-person rehearsal, though, Blue Stars’ brass staff — like many instructional teams around the drum corps community — learned heaps of information during the majority-virtual teaching and rehearsal of the past two years.
They picked up on new techniques and developed a deeper understanding of tools — such as Zoom and SmartMusic — that had already been at their disposal. Those tools ultimately influenced the corps’ handling of the 2022 offseason as well.
“SmartMusic is one thing that we do to get the kids ready for camp and for performance,” Larsen said, referencing the multi-use software program that allows members to track progress, work on exercises, tune their instruments and more. “It doesn't do the work for you, you have to implement a program, with SmartMusic as the tool to make it all happen.”
“We try to simulate these rehearsal settings as much as we can virtually,” Larson said. “We have kids unmute and play, we have them with their own metronome, and that’s something that we kind of grew into and learned. Couple that with SmartMusic, and we have some good preparation, and we'll set ourselves up for success.”
Frankly, though, beyond the teaching side of things, they learned just how talented and quick-to-learn their members really are, evidenced in how they took on and conquered the many challenges presented by virtual learning.
“The 2021 season really helped to get them acclimated into how we do drum corps, and they seem to be buying in (in 2022),” Larson said. “We had a great retention rate. So that's been setting us up for a really, really successful 2022.”
Larson, in discussing Blue Stars’ outlook for 2022, kept things relatively coy regarding programming. But he and others involved with the corps did allude to one specific characteristic of their 2022 production, as it compares to a year ago.
It’s darker.
“It's completely different from what we did last year,” Larson said.
“Last year’s production was so full of life and celebration, and just had this really fun, playful vibe,” he added. “And that's certainly not what's going on this year.”