Spotlight of the Week: 1993 Phantom Regiment

The 1993 Drum Corps International World Championships were held in Jackson, Mississippi, amidst stifling heat and oppressive humidity.

The most talk among fans may have been Star of Indiana's controversial "Medea" show, with its extensive use of uncomfortable silences and arduous choreography. Star, in its last season in DCI competition, won 30 of 34 competitions, only losing four to the eventual World Champion Cadets of Bergen County.

Blue Devils' color guard brought out gigantic paintbrushes for "A Don Ellis Portrait." The corps took fourth place over The Cavaliers, who had swept the Devils in all six shows during an early-season California tour. Rounding out the top-six corps, Madison Scouts played "Strawberry Soup."

In third place, 1.10 points under Star of Indiana and 1.10 points above the Blue Devils was Phantom Regiment.

 

Regiment’s 1993 production, "The Modern Imagination," was inspired by progressive innovators who weren’t appreciated in their own time or country, namely composers Alberto Ginastera, Dimitri Shostakovich and Bernard Herrmann as well as artist Henri Matisse. Explained in the 1993 DCI Souvenir Yearbook:

Outside of South America, Alberto Ginastera’s music did not receive the notice many felt it deserved. Dimitri Shostakovich was in effect a prisoner to the demands of the Soviet regime. American composer Bernard Hermann never became a household word despite his numerous startling movie scores. Henri Matisse, though famous, was scorned by many for his innocent childlike approach to design.

Matisse, who famously captured the innocence of children's fascination with pure form and bright color. In particular, the visual stimulus for “The Modern Imagination” came from Matisse's famed work, "Icarus," the most popular illustration in his book, "Jazz."

 

The corps’ front ensemble percussion instruments were set back on the left side of the field, between the 30 and 40-yard lines; leaving the normal space for the pit around the 50-yard line to be used for a variety of brass, drum and color guard features.

The first three works in the show came from the 1943 suite extracted from the 1941 ballet, "Estancia" by Ginastera, an Argentinian composer who studied under Aaron Copland. A New York dance company commissioned the ballet, but disbanded prior to the scheduled premiere. An estancia is a South American ranch in the southern pampas grasslands, which due to being a livestock estate, is worked by gauchos (similar to North American cowboys) on horseback.

"The Landworkers (Los trabajadores agrícolas)" kicked off musically with repetitive drums and statements by the mellophones. Visually, some sudden pivoting turns by the baritones created the impression of cattle running from being lassoed. "The Wheat Dance (Danza del trigo)" came next, offering a lyrical interlude.

 

"Danza Final (Malambo)" was the final selection from "Estancia," taking its title from a competitive dance among the gauchos. Starting with an extended drum feature, the piece then went into the frenetic melody first played by the corps in 1979. Near the end, the brass players crab stepped to the side during a hard-hitting repetitive chord and then added more flash with a quick 360-degree turn.

A crowd favorite of Phantom Regiment is Dmitri Shostakovich's relatively unknown "The Fire of Eternal Glory (Novorossiysk Chimes)." It is a 1960 piece written for the war memorial in the city of Novorossiysk, Russia's main port on the Black Sea, though Shostakovich originally wrote the melody in 1943 for a contest to select a new Soviet national anthem. Since 1993, Phantom Regiment has often played the piece as an encore production.

At the beginning of the piece, the brass players set their helmets on the field to the sound of various metallic chimes, then the lush harmonies of the lower brass section wafted over the backfield as the corps played to the back stands. This is where flags with Matisse's "Icarus" were utilized. The brass players coalesced to the front in a tight wedge and then made their way back to the swirling form made by the helmets.

 

"Death Hunt," from the 1951 crime drama movie, "On Dangerous Ground," was the furious chase music written by Herrmann, a composer well-known for the eight film scores he wrote for Alfred Hitchcock. Squealing French horn riffs were re-created by the corps to chilling effect. The terror generated by the horns during this work made plenty of hairs stand up on the backs of the audience members' necks.

From the 1993 DCI Souvenir Yearbook: “'Death Hunt' ends the show in a violently wild and explosive burst of shrieking brass and pounding-into-submission percussion, capturing the nightmarish elements of the film action and shoving the abrupt ending right down the throats of the stunned audience.”

Accelerating to the final stabbing two notes, the sudden conclusion of the piece was akin to falling off a cliff that you didn't see approaching.

1993 Overview

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Michael Boo was a member of the Cavaliers from 1975-1977. He wrote about the drum corps activity for more than 35 years while serving as a staff writer for various Drum Corps International projects. During his lifetime Boo wrote for numerous other publications including an honors-winning book on the history of figure skating. He also was an accomplished composer. Boo passed away in 2020 and was inducted into the DCI Hall of Fame posthumously in 2021.