Michigan State University Spartan Marching Band
The Spartan Marching Band (or SMB) is Michigan State University's Marching Band. Founded in 1870 as a 10-member student group, the 300-member SMB has since grown into one of the premier bands in the United States. The SMB is renowned among the nation and prides itself on its musical excellence, physical toughness, and military-grade precision, and they have maintained a reputation as one of the nation's best marching bands since their first appearance in the Rose Bowl in 1954. The band has played for five U.S. Presidents, performed at four Rose Bowls, two World's Fairs, and one World Series. The Spartan Marching Band is the oldest band in the Big Ten Conference.
The SMB has toured the United States extensively, appearing in concert and on football fields in San Francisco, New York City, Dallas, Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Orlando, St. Louis, Denver, New Orleans, Pasadena, Salt Lake City, El Paso, San Antonio, Tokyo, Tucson, San Diego, Tampa and Washington, D.C.
Read more about Michigan State University Spartan Marching Band: Instrumentation, Auditions, Trivia
Famous quotes containing the words state, university, spartan, marching and/or band:
“Though seen but once, it helps to wash out State Street and the engine’s soot.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In bourgeois society, the French and the industrial revolution transformed the authorization of political space. The political revolution put an end to the formalized hierarchy of the ancien regimé.... Concurrently, the industrial revolution subverted the social hierarchy upon which the old political space was based. It transformed the experience of society from one of vertical hierarchy to one of horizontal class stratification.”
—Donald M. Lowe, U.S. historian, educator. History of Bourgeois Perception, ch. 4, University of Chicago Press (1982)
“But there’s another knowledge that my heart destroys
As the fox in the old fable destroyed the Spartan boy’s
Because it proves that things both can and cannot be;
That the swordsmen and the ladies can still keep company;
Can pay the poet for a verse and hear the fiddle sound,
That I am still their servant though all are underground.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The chief problem is, of course, whether the marching of the general spirit of things is heading consciously or sub- consciously toward an idea of extension of boundaries.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“The band waked me with a serenade. How they improve! A fine band and what a life in a regiment! Their music is better than food and clothing to give spirit to the men.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)