The Mahomet-Seymour Marching Band is ready to turn dreams into reality.
“Dreamscapes” will follow a young girl’s journey from a night-time routine into a nightmare where she loses her teddy bear to a jester-like character. MSHS Band Director, Michael Stevens came up with the idea in January when he was talking to a friend who arranges music for the marching band.
“We came up with the idea that we don’t want something so concrete that we have to have a definite storyline,” he said. “With dreams, you don’t have to tie things together. They can be chaotic and random. With this, we can use different types of music and costumes, and not tied down to any one specific thing.”
The show will begin with the girl falling asleep to a lullaby. The music will then morph into Lana Del Rey’s “Once Upon a Dream.” From there, Stevens selected music from the score of “Alice in Wonderland,” “Beetlejuice” and “Inception.” Just as the girl has resolved that she will not get her teddy bear back she will be protected by the color guard and percussion section as the band plays “Gravity” by Sara Bareilles and “Elements” by Brian Balmages.
“We will tug at the heartstrings of the crowd,” Stevens said.
This year’s squad, consisting of 207 members, kicked off June by hosting freshmen camp. The color guard and percussion worked at the end of July, and now all members are putting in roughly eight hours a day to make the show come to life.
Coming off last year’s winning performance at the University of Illinois and visiting the Fiesta Bowl in January, Stevens was surprised that this year’s numbers turned out to be exactly the same as last year. The band, which was led by quite a few seniors last year, now consists of mostly freshmen and sophomores.
Stevens is confident that the junior and senior class will train the young squad well and that the underclassmen will step up to provide a sensational performance this year.
Marching band season will kick-off the first weekend of October as the group travels to Eastern Illinois University. Stevens hopes the group can recapture the title at the University of Illinois before they head off to the Bands of America competition in St. Louis the fourth weekend of October.
Mahomet-Seymour residents can support this year’s squad by watching them perform at the 2016 Marching Bulldog Festival on October 8.
