Alumni corps have become a staple of the DCI Summer Tour in recent seasons.
Especially at the DCI World Championships, drum corps organizations celebrating milestone anniversaries have had the opportunity to leave their mark on individual summers with nostalgic performances by decades of passionate alumni.
Setting the stage for the corps’ 50th anniversary, it’s Spirit of Atlanta’s turn. A bevy of the Georgia corps’ alumni will perform classic hits from five decades of Spirit history to celebrate the occasion.
“This is more than just a performance,” Spirit of Atlanta Alumni Corps co-director Brad Caraway said. “It’s a celebration of everything Spirit of Atlanta has meant to generations of members and fans. The music, the passion, the camaraderie — it’s all coming back to life on the field.”
“It’s kind of like a homecoming,” added Spirit alum Andrea Back. "People are coming from all over to rekindle relationships that have lasted a lifetime.”
Alumni corps have highlighted each of the last three years’ worth of World Championship events, including Crossmen in 2024, Troopers in 2023, and Bluecoats in 2022. Spirit of Atlanta’s plan is similar to those that came before it — tap into the corps’ history, and play the hits.
For the Georgia corps, of course, that means a few specific titles immediately come to mind. Spirit’s alumni corps will perform the likes of “Georgia On My Mind,” “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” and “Georgia.”
“Everybody thought the way to go was the greatest hits,” Caraway said. “That’s what most of the alumni corps do, and we felt like that was the most appropriate thing for us to do.”
That being said, Spirit’s aim isn’t just to pay homage to its most famed music selections. The organization also plans to pay homage to the corps’ most storied composers, performing arrangements inspired by the late Jim Ott and Robert W. Smith, both of whom spent extensive time with the corps.
Smith passed away in 2023, but had spent significant time working on arrangements for the alumni corps’ performance prior to his passing.
“Robert meant to mirror and recapture what Jim did, particularly with ‘Sweet Georgia Brown,’ Caraway said. “He drilled down into Jim’s charts, studied them closely, and recreated them exactly as Jim had originally done — at least as much as the new instrumentation would allow.”
As far as the group’s makeup, alumni corps co-director Deedee Kenner said the corps includes alumni from across Spirit of Atlanta’s entire history. Members have also made plans to journey from all over the world in order to relive their Spirit memories.
“We have a gentleman in the horn line who aged out in ‘78 or ‘79 standing next to someone who aged out in 2018, and they’ve become the best of friends,” Kenner said. “We have people from every year the corps fielded, coming from as far as England, California, New York, and Rhode Island.”
The Spirit of Atlanta alumni corps plans to rehearse on weekends throughout the spring and summer, prior to gathering in Indianapolis in August. Outside of rehearsals, though, members will have plenty of opportunity to prepare remotely.
“We haven’t done the drill yet, but Steve Moore is writing it, just like he did for us back in the early ‘80s,” Caraway said. “Most of it will be available digitally for members to learn ahead of time.”
And even though its World Championship performance is still months away, excitement to capitalize on the opportunity at hand — both in terms of the creation of performers’ memories, and the benefit and growth of the organization — is already sky-high.
“Ultimately, this effort is about creating positive publicity for the organization,” Caraway said, “and reminding the public why they loved Spirit of Atlanta in the first place.”