Band Winds Up Season With Commencement Appearance

Sixty members of the rejuvenated University band will blow their final notes of the year at the Commencement exercises this week, marking the latest in a long series of "firsts" to which the 1946-47 Crimson marchers have staked claim.

Never before in the history of the college has the student band played an official part in the exercises, so this week will be a radical departure, featuring as it does performances Class Day night, at the Yale baseball game, and in the parade of Reunion classes before the diamond encounter.

Starting with emaciated pocketbooks and a large group of enthusiastic musicians in September, the band played and spelled its way through nine football games to an unofficial "best in the business" plaudit from the New Yorker in November. Statistically-minded members noted gleefully at the conclusion of the season that the red-coated marchers had formed 208 letters to a meagre 28 for the opposition musicians.

Not content with a good football season, the band management took the plunge in early December and arranged a full year's operations. Concerts this spring included an early April appearance in Sanders, where Milhaud's "Suite Francaise" and Prokofieff's "March" received their first New England performances, and two sessions at the Veterans' hospitals in Bedford and at Fort Devens.

Two warmup parades on Patriot's Day--one in Lexington and the other in a Boston parade--gave band members some spring training for next fall's impressive schedule. A trip to Virginia will highlight early-season play, while the customary New Haven trip will close out the schedule. Two new medleys, one each for Boston University and Virginia, promise to continue the string of successful band originals.

Although the plans for traveling to Virginia are fairly certain now, the managers are still faced with financial troubles. The last time a Crimson music unit traveled into the hinterlands--for the Michigan game in 1939--Harvard Clubs along the way paid for the musicians expenses, and some such aid is hoped for next fall.

Recordings have been the final factor in the band's rise into big business this year. With the issue of the Ivy League Album in mid-winter, the office in the basement of Payne Hall has become a beehive of activity. "Over 3000 albums have been sold," claimed Manager W. Jay Skinner '48, "and we had to turn down a request from Holy Cross to make recordings of their songs at their own expense."

Practically the only sour note of the year was sounded by Bill Cunningham, whose sensitive Dartmouth ear was offended by several trombone notes at the end of the Big Green recording. Although refusing to provoke any further wrath from Bill, Manager Skinner placed the blame squarely on the columnist's shoulders by giving his trombonists a clean bill of health and commenting that "Cunningham apparently doesn't know a trombone from a tuba anyway."