Vanguard Music and Performing Arts ended its 50th anniversary 2017 season on Aug. 12, capturing a silver medal at the Drum Corps International World Class Championships in Indianapolis, Ind.
Performing its crowd-pleasing 2017 show, “Ouroboros,” with a repertoire including David Gillingham’s “Interplay,” Peter Graham’s “The Triumph of Time,” Zhou Long’s “Son of Eight Unruly Tipsy Poets,” Amin Bhatia’s “Into a Virtual World” and Stephen Melillo’s “Remembering the Future,” the Santa Clara Vanguard narrowly lost the championship to the Blue Devils of Concord. The Blue Devils, coincidentally, were celebrating the corps’ 60th anniversary this year and earned the victory with a score of 98.538 to Vanguard’s 97.600 in front of a record-breaking crowd of 23,342. Vanguard also took home top honors in the percussion and color guard captions, receiving the Fred Sanford Best Percussion Performance Award and George Zingali Best Color Guard Award.
The Vanguard Cadets brought a fourth title to Santa Clara, winning the Open Class World Championship Gold Medal on Aug. 8, and took 16th place in the World Class round of competition. Performing its 2017 show, “In Pieces,” with a repertoire including Ojos de Brujo’s “Feedback,” Fred Emory Smith’s “Kaleidoscope,” Christopher Tin’s “Temen Oblak” and John Mackey’s “Harvest,” the Cadets’ score of 80.725 beat the Blue Devils B Corps’ score of 79.625 for the victory. The Cadets also swept the caption awards, taking home Best Brass Performance, Best General Effect, Best Visual Performance and Best Color Guard.
“This was an incredible finish to a very special season for us,” said Vanguard Corps Director Shaun Gallant. “Being our 50th Anniversary, we set out to challenge boundaries and push the activity in a way that would wow audiences and bring us back into the race for a gold medal. We are extremely proud to bring home the Open Class Gold and World Class Silver medals in 2017, and I can’t wait to see what 2018 holds for the organization.”
In honor of its golden anniversary, Vanguard also put together an alumni corps to participate in the season-long festivities. Filled with nearly 300 former members of the Santa Clara Vanguard, the Vanguard Alumni Corps performed at the DCI Championships during the semi-finals competition on Aug. 11.
Vanguard is already preparing for its 2018 season. Musicians and color guard participants between the ages of 18 and 22 who would like to be part of next year’s corps are encouraged to visit www.scvanguard.org/2018auditions to sign up for a tryout. Locally, Vanguard tryouts will be held Dec. 1-3, 2017 in San Jose. Tryouts for the Vanguard Cadets will be held in San Jose Dec. 15-17. Visit www.scvanguard.org for more information.