The Boston Crusaders 2018 February production camp is in the books and the members continue to impress. The brass and percussion continue to work incredibly hard in between camps so that time together is completely maximized and the focus is on creating musical synergy when all the performers assemble.

The weekend started with a special Friday delivery of the 2018 Boston Crusaders brass instruments. Annually, the Boston Crusaders replace every Yamaha instrument so that the full ensemble is performing on new Yamaha instruments each season. Thank you to Jon Goldman and Yamaha for all the great support, and for making superior quality instruments. Friday night concluded with a membership meeting led by the 2018 Drum Majors, Kaitlin Oresky and Nicholas Winckel.

Dr. Vivien Tucker and alumnus Trent Hayden were onsite all weekend completing the individual member physical assessments and working with visual caption lead Aaron Bailey and visual designer/choreographer Brady Sanders on the physical conditioning, strength, and flexibility needs. As the outfitting of the 2018 corps will be custom fit, Barb Ferguson once again dedicated her weekend to meticulously measuring every member.

The percussion section learned two additional minutes of new material. This high impact and virtuosic drumming — currently referred to as “Act II” — will present the BAC percussion in a fresh and exciting manner. The brass section learned the ballad section of the 2018 production and pieced the entirety of that piece — “Act III” — together on Saturday night. The brass sounded terrific. Designers Ryan George, Colin McNutt, Mike Zellers, Brady Sanders and Leon May were on hand to hear the music live and to continue crafting the 2018 production. Sunday morning was spent outside – one of the advantages of our Florida winter season – working on Act I and Act II as a full musical ensemble.

As always, thank you to Lakewood Ranch High School for hosting us and all of our volunteers for executing a successful production camp. We are at Lakewood Ranch for a brass only camp March 16-18, then it is all hands on deck April 27-29 as we host guard callbacks and work to complete the 2018 music production.