 "Photo: Macy's Thanksgivingday Parade Eric Gazzillo/The Towerlight")
Somewhere between the Winter Wonderland float and the giant Smurf balloon, the Towson University TIGER Marching Band took the spotlight. For the first time in the school’s history, the band played in the nationally-televised Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade before an audience of thousands in the stands and millions watching at home Thanksgiving Day.
Those who did not know about the band’s parade appearance may have been confused after NBC mistakenly displayed the words “Towson High School” shortly after the band entered the screen. The graphic was broadcasted twice consecutively before NBC removed the graphic, not putting up a correction.
For the NBC cameras, they played “Get It On” by Bill Chase – a piece they performed as part of their field show in 2006.
Band director John Miliauskas said he was pleased with the end result. “From a performance standpoint, I think we did as well as we were going to do. Throughout the parade route, I thought we looked good and we sounded good,” he said.
Throughout the parade, the band played and sang the Towson fight song, “Hail Towson,” as well as “Strike up the Band” and the drumline’s cadence.
“The performance was fun. There were a few slip-ups that happened, but overall it was a lot of fun,” senior environmental science major Nicholas Zahn said, who is a member of the band. “It was a lot of work getting here; that’s no lie at all. But I think the excitement of last night’s rehearsal and today’s performance was amazing.”
The band had been up since 2 a.m., when they received a wake-up call and loaded the buses to practice in Herald Square for NBC. After their rehearsal, they went to Planet Hollywood for breakfast and then waited in Central Park among the floats, balloons and other performers for the parade to start.
Miliauskas said after everything was all said and done, he started to feel the after-effects of such an intense schedule.
“The adrenaline started running out,” he said. “When you sleep two nights for a total of four hours and then perform in a three-mile parade on national television, it’s a killer.”
Thankfully for the band and everyone involved, there were no surprises and no injuries of any kind – every band member marched the whole way through the 2.8-mile route.
“There was some horse poop we had to walk through. Other than some random obstacles, there weren’t really any surprises,” junior English major Natalie Yelenik said.
The band has been practicing rigorously throughout the season for the parade on top of their regular field show duties for home football games; but the end result made all of the hardships worthwhile, according to drum major Brendan Maltese.
“All the hard work we did, it’s definitely worth it. It’s incredible – great people, great show, great everything,” he said. “It was all worth it.”
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7 comments
Seriously though the marching band is great and it was a lot of fun to sing the fight song in a crowd of people who had never even heard of Towson until then. =)