The 2007 Drum Corps International World Championships marked the first in 35 years to be held west of the Rocky Mountains, taking up residence in the iconic confines of Pasadena’s Rose Bowl Stadium.
The World Championship Quarterfinals and Semifinals welcomed a new face in The Academy, moving up after winning the Division II title in 2006, the first year the corps took a national tour. The Arizona corps even surprised a few corps by placing 10th at the DCI Southwestern Championship in San Antonio, knocking the eventual finalist Spirit of Atlanta out of the Alamodome Finals and also passing up eventual World Championship finalists Colts and Glassmen.
Perhaps no corps has ever been as happy to finish a season in 20th place as the Troopers, taking the field with 64 horns after being inactive a year prior. The Pasadena events were the last that DCI corps competed under the banners of Division I, II, and III. The following November, directors voted to move to the Open Class & World Class divisions we now know.
Earlier in the season, all but two of the 21 other Division I corps had placed higher than the eventual 15th-place Madison Scouts, including five of the corps the Scouts ended up outscoring in Pasadena. The corps’ “Unbound” show provided a glimpse into a somewhat more pop-oriented repertoire than what was witnessed in the years just prior to 2007.
Watch Madison's "Unbound" on DVD
Madison’s production began with Alanis Morissette’s ethereal and exotic “Uninvited.” The song, which won the 1991 Grammys for best rock song and best song written for a motion picture or for television, came from the soundtrack to the 1998 film, “City of Angels.” The film, however, is not to be confused with the musical of the same name that Scouts performed exclusively in 1991 and 1992.
The corps started the show in a tight triangular block outside the left end zone with color guard members attached to the form with long strips of yellow fabric. As the performers individually broke the bonds of the fabric, they played off the show’s title, unbinding themselves from the form holding them back. The horn players wordlessly verbalized the opening strains of the song in choral counterpoint, spilling out toward a single row along the 15-yard line that proceeded across the field while leaving members behind along the way. It was one of the most mystical openings ever witnessed on the field.
2007 Madison Scouts | "Unbound"Fauré’s “Pie Jesu” from “Requiem in D minor” More from Madison Scouts' "Unbound" ➡️ bit.ly/Scouts07spot
Posted by Drum Corps International on Sunday, December 15, 2019
As the opening segued into Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir,” the brass and drum line formed the left half of the corps’ iconic fleur-de-lis logo. After the fanfare, an intriguing musical tension was created by layering the pull of the 3/4 meter in the drums atop the 4/4 meter of the melody. The conclusion of the piece offered up the previously missing right side of a fleur-de-lis, set on an angle, with the strains of the music reveling in the pure muscular brawn of many of the corps’ previous opener endings.
Played mostly to the backfield, “Pie Jesu” from “Requiem in D minor” came from Gabriel Fauré’s 1887-1890 choral and instrumental setting of the Roman Catholic Latin mass. Divinely beautiful and poignant, a lone mellophonist wrapped by the color guard in yellow strips played the introductory melody.
Famed composer Camille Saint-Saëns said of this movement, “Just as Mozart’s [‘Requiem’] is the only ‘Ave verum corpus,’ this is the only ‘Pie Jesu.’” At the end, the horns and drums formed an entire fleur-de-lis, this time taking up a full 50 yards and turning to face the stands, accompanied by glistening silver flags.
Out of the serenity came the fiery passion of Astor Piazzolla’s 1974 “Libertango” from the composer’s album of the same name. The title blends the Spanish words for “liberty” and Argentinian ballroom dance, referencing the liberty of Tango Nuevo (new tango), a style Piazzolla fostered to express his reinvention of the idiom.
Another half fleur-de-lis formation, this time the left side slanted to the left, led into a short blast of closing material from Craig Armstrong’s soundtrack to “Moulin Rouge,” the 2001 romantic film set in the famous Parisian nightclub.
Madison Scouts did not qualify for the DCI World Championship Finals in 1974, 2002, 2007, and 2016. In each of those cases, the corps bounced back into Finals the following season, reminding fans that the corps is resilient and should never be counted out of the Finals equation for long.
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.