Cavalier Marching Band
| Cavalier Marching Band | |
|---|---|
 |
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| School | University of Virginia |
| Location | Charlottesville, VA |
| Conference | ACC |
| Founded | 2003 |
| Director | William Pease |
| Assistant director |
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| Members | 300+ |
| Fight song | "The Cavalier Song" |
| Website | www |
The Cavalier Marching Band (CMB) is the premier marching ensemble at the University of Virginia. Under the direction of Dr. William E. Pease, the first full-time marching band director in University of Virginia history, the Cavalier Marching Band made its debut on September 11, 2004 after a considerable donation was made by University of Virginia benefactors Carl and Hunter Smith to found the band in 2003. Currently in its eleventh season, the band is composed of over 330 of the University of Virginia's best and brightest student musicians, with representatives from over 80 different majors from all 7 of the undergraduate schools. Whenever describing the composition of the members of the band, Pease typically states that almost none are music majors but almost a third hold leadership positions, thus emphasizing the virtue of student-self-governance, an ideal widely emphasized at the University of Virginia. On September 2, 2011, the Cavalier Marching Band moved into the Hunter Smith Band Building within the College of Arts & Sciences.
The band rehearses twice a week on non-home game weeks and three times a week on home game weeks. The band performs a traditional pregame show prior to the start of football games, which features school songs such as "The Cavalier Song" and "Hoo Time" to inspire athletes and thousands of cheering Wahoo fans. The band also performs a new, memorized halftime show for every home football game, with a wider variety of music ranging from rock to jazz, pop tunes to classical melodies, and movie favorites to swing charts. Following home games, selections from halftime are repeated for a postgame show for the remaining fans in Scott Stadium. The band usually travels to two or three away games each season and has occasionally given exhibition performances at high school competitions.
The Cavalier Marching Band was selected to march in the 2015 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. The CMB was also featured in the 2009 film Marching Band, a documentary directed by world-renowned French producer and writer Claude Miller.
The Cavalier Marching Band is assisted by the Beta Chi Chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi and the Iota Kappa Chapter of Tau Beta Sigma.
The band program at the University of Virginia has undergone multiple evolutions throughout its history. The first mentioning of a band at the university came in a 1908 edition of College Topics, the predecessor to the current The Cavalier Daily, which reported on William Howard Taft's victory over William Jennings Bryan in the U.S. presidential elections. College Topics recounted that the University Band joined a large group of students at a downtown billiard parlor and "added greatly to the general spirit of excitement by its presence."
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