A little more than a month ago, the IU Marching Hundred and IU Trumpet Professors Dave Woodley and Joey Tartell (respectively) sent word to all the trumpet players in the marching band and in Jacobs School of Music that the U.S. Army Herald Trumpets wanted to put together a mass trumpet ensemble to perform at the NCAA Final Four Championship game, which took place last night at Lucas Oil Stadium. Though not quite the first of its kind, this was an extremely bold and monumental undertaking in the music and athletic worlds because of the sheer size of the project, both with regards to the number of involved trumpets and the 70,000+ people watching in person along with the hundreds of thousands watching live on television.
There were approximately 110 trumpets in total from three different universities from Indiana (IU, Ball State, and Purdue), approximately half of which were from IU. This could have very easily been an organizational nightmare and a gigantic disaster. However, the staff from NCAA and supporting schools and organizations were so incredibly organized that the entire night went extremely smoothly, and our dress rehearsal even ended early because of how smoothly and efficiently it ran, leaving plenty of time for the social media feeds of the participating trumpet players' friends and colleagues to blow up with selfies and action shots of the stadium and rehearsal process before the game began.
Anyone who has followed my career knows that I have incredibly lucky, blessed, and fortunate to share very many once-in-a-lifetime experiences - a good number of which have showed up on television and in the newspapers in some regard - but the colossal significance of this particular event was the mass exposure of world class musicianship by professionally trained musicians who stand among the best in the business, who chose to share the same experience with up-and-coming professionals of the future music world.
Any classically trained musicians concerned about pep bands and pop music replacing highly trained and professional musicians in the public eye can rest easy as they watch last night's national anthem float all around the social media with comments of love and adoration from all over the world, musicians and non-musicians alike. Musicians of all backgrounds can, in fact, co-exist in harmony. As I have said multiple times for years. Music is about contribution, and ALL types of music exist for EVERYONE to enjoy. This performance was another reminder of this simple beautiful concept, and I'm glad it has been captured to reminisce upon for the rest of my life.
Marcus Grant
Teacher, Composer, Trumpeter
http://www.msgrantmusic.org
http://www.facebook.com/msgrantmusic
http://www.soundcloud.com/msgrantmusic
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