2005 TKA Magic Show

2005 TKA magic show. Today’s post will document The King’s Academy (TKA) Marching Lion’s 2005 marching band show called, “Cirque du Magic”.

If you haven’t read last week’s post, I encourage you to read it before moving on. The 2005 show is possible due to the success of the 2004 show.

Getting started

Music comes first when I’m picking a show and 2005 was no different. I went back to Arranger’s Publishing Company and listened to everything they had to offer for marching band.

I paid particular attention to their music that was written for small bands. We would be looking at a band of 48 members again in 2005 and that included the colorguard.

I settled on music from La Nouba from Cirque du Soleil. But, did that mean we were going to do a circus show?

I had seen a circus show before and I didn’t like the way it looked. And, I hated copying other shows.

So, I wasn’t overly thrilled with the circus idea.

Magic

When I listened to the music I kept seeing a magician doing tricks. When I ran the idea by our colorguard instructor, she thought that we could make it work.

One of us began referring to the show as, “Cirque du Magic” and that stuck. 2005 would be the Cirque du Magic show. But how were we going to get magic tricks to work on a football field in a halftime show?

Hooking the audience

When you’re performing a half-time show you have seconds to grab your audience’s attention. If they aren’t hooked within 30 seconds, you’re done. They’re going to go get a hot dog.

We took the magic idea to our band parents and they came through in a big way. Mr. Z said he could build a box that would make it appear that someone appeared/dissappeard.

I was skeptical, but he assured me that the trick was an easy illusion. He built the box and I was amazed at how well it worked.

But, how would we incorporate it into the show? To answer that question, I need to back up a bit and talk about drum majors.

Drum majors

My Dad was the drum major in Norwin Band in the early 50’s. I think that the drum major is a valuable leadership position in the band. But… the band doesn’t watch them when they play their music.

Sometimes they can’t even see them! So, do we need them?

This was a question I had been entertaining for years. In the 80’s the drum major would bark out, “1, 2, 3 4!” to start a song and, “Horns up” to get the instruments up. But, as we moved into the 2000’s the drum majors stopped barking.

I had one other issue with the drum major. They stood on a huge platform in front of the field and blocked the audience view. They’re flapping away and no one is watching.

So, I wondered, “Can we run a show without a drum major?”

2005 gave us an opportunity to try an experiment.

The Opener

The question was, “What if we start the show without a drum major?”. How would the music start? Who would acknowledge that the band is ready to perform? Would the band be able to keep the music together without a director?

There would only be one way to find out.

I wrote the opening set as a series of concentric circles. Mr. Z’s magic box would be in the middle of the form with the drum major in the false bottom. This would allow the band to be very close together and limit the risk of the music falling apart. And, this would create a focus point on the box.

We had an outstanding senior percussionist. I told him to hit the snare drum 4 times to start the song and held my breath…

It worked.

We staged a few colorguard members next to the magic box. The would rotate the box while the band rotated the concentric circles in contrary directions. We wanted to create the effect of a magician’s assistant showing everyone the various sides of the box.

The band played while opening the form. The box broke free of the form and the drum major “appeared” complete with tuxedo and top hat!

The field

We needed more than just a magic box. Our parents designed two large objects that would help to set the stage for the performance.

One side of the field had a huge black top hat with a red band. It was well designed to set up and tear down relatively easily.

The other side of the field had a hand of cards. The cards were large pieces of corrugated plastic with stickers for various card faces. They were probably close to 6 feet tall and were easily knocked over by the wind. But they looked great.

More tricks

We also had a sword box built. The colorguard did choreography with their sabres and pulled a band member from the form. We had her act too scared to go into the box.

I’m not sure that the effect worked, but I thought it was funny.

We also tried to do a card trick. It was supposed to be a variation on the, “The card you’re thinking of is in your pocket” trick.

A colorguard member held up an oversized card and then someone else pulled a string on the sousaphone which released the same card. The parents created the card using fabric and rolled it up under the bottom of the sousaphone.

Hard to describe. It didn’t work. No one understood what we were doing, but I kept it in because I liked it.

Director’s privilege.

“And she’s not there!”

We finished the show by returning to the magic box.

The drum major descended from the podium while the colorguard pushed the magic box back onto the field.

We curled the band around the box and the drum major jumped up onto the box. The sides were then closed and a cloth lid was placed on top.

The band played the final lines as the colorguard members pulled the latches that kept the sides of the box together. This caused the sides of the box to fall down dramatically and… no drum major!

The music sounded like “And she’s not there!”

Results

We made it into finals and placed 2nd in the state. We had outscored the first place band just 2 weeks prior to the state championships. Maybe we peaked too early.

This show taught me a lot and was a laboratory of ideas. We were gaining confidence in both our creative process and in our performing abilities.

We were now back to back FMBC state finalists and knew we could hold our own on the big stage.

PS – Odds and ends

My 8 year old son thought we really made the drum major disappear. He’d watch the show and then ask, “Where did she go?”.

Our drum major was sick before one of the performances and had to put various drinks in the magic box in order to get through the show.

We sold the magic box to Jupiter high school and they used in their show. They repainted it and ruined it. (My opinion. But, it was theirs to ruin.)

Our senior percussionist returned to TKA in 2015 as the assistant band director. He played a central role in the designing and producing of our final marching band show, “At the Crossroads“. (The TKA Marching Lions were dissolved in the summer of 2016.)

This was the first year that FMBC held finals inside on Tropicana Field.