 "Photo: Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade by 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 streets and millions watching at home Thanksgiving Day.
Preparations
Those viewing at home may have experienced some confusion when NBC labeled the band with a graphic that read “Towson High School” instead of “Towson University.” Band director John Miliauskas said he heard about what happened, but wasn’t entirely displeased with it.
“Those are things out of our control. That’s someone else’s performance issue, not ours. If that’s the one thing that goes wrong amongst the possible things that could have gone wrong, that’s not so bad,” he said. “You have to wait six years to apply for the parade again, and I will certainly drop a little hint, like ‘you can make it up six years from now when we apply again.’”
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. For the NBC cameras, they played a medley of music by Bill Chase – a piece they performed as part of their field show in 2006.
The March
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.
Band members also expressed how excited they were with their show.
“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. “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 in Times Square 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. I realized I was tired at the end. Your mind is on, and you’re not realizing you’re tired. As we were setting up for [the band’s group portrait,] I started feeling it. I was like, oh yeah, my legs are really sore and my back is really stiff.”
Throughout the experience, the band did not have any negative surprises or injuries – every band member marched the whole way through the 2.8 mile route. The band had a nurse and a paramedic walking behind the band, but their services were not required along the way.
There were some surprises for the band members, however.
“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 senior 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.”
Other band members said they didn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel until they were there in NYC.
“It was kind of hard to see the payoff until now,” junior Myles Pennington said. “I think now that I’ve gotten here, it seems all worth it. This year in marching band we really stepped up the intensity because of the parade, and it was kind of a bummer a bit at times, but now it’s definitely all worth it.”
The band went back to their hotel and many members chose to take a nap after the parade. Following that, they were treated to a dinner cruise around Manhattan Island. The remainder of the trip was decided upon by the students, as they had free time in the city, interrupted briefly with tickets to see “Stomp” at the Orpheum Theater. The weather held out during all four days, despite frequent predictions of rain.
Post-Parade Thoughts
“I told the band we paid our dues all season with one of the rainiest falls ever. We got a fantastic day yesterday and a better one today,” Miliauskas said Thursday.
The band expressed they were pleased with the entire experience, and Miliauskas said he hopes that “the entire Towson University community is proud” of the band’s performance.
“So many people contributed to this. There are very few departments on campus who haven’t worked on behalf of this band,” he said. “It truly is the University’s marching band.”
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