History
Founded in 1897, the Penn Band stands among the oldest college bands in the country, and one of the nation's first traveling bands (1901). According to popular legend, the band began after a single cornet player named A. Felix DuPont played to the jeers of residents in the student quadrangle (“Shut up, frosh!”). A more understanding upperclassman, John Ammon, helped DuPont gather 27 volunteers who formed the school's first band.
Its history is marked with a sustained record of performance and achievement. In its first year, the Band performed twice for President William McKinley, as well as at the opening of Houston Hall, the country’s first student union. The organization later became an integral part of Penn sporting events—one of the first college bands to play regularly at sporting events. It has been a staple at historic Franklin Field and the Palestra, and campus traditions such as ‘Hey Day,’ ‘Rowbottoms,’, and Commencement ceremonies.
Appearances during the 20th century include countless NCAA tournament games (including The NCAA Final Four in 1979), the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (one of the first collegiate marching bands to ever march in the parade), the 1964 New York World's Fair, and the Miss America Pageant Parade (on more than one occasion).
During its history, the organization has performed with notable musicians, including John Phillip Sousa, Edwin Franko Goldman, members of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the U.S. Marine Band (“The President's Own”), Doc Severinsen of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and the prominent composer Václav Nelhýbel. The band’s performances also include national broadcasts and numerous recordings, beginning in the late 1920s and 1930s with the Victor Talking Machine Company (RCA-Victor Company) and nationally-broadcast performances on WABC. In popular culture, Chuck Barris of Gong Show fame performed with the Band in 1977, and the Band opened for the Maury Povich Show in 1980.
The group has performed at the pleasure of many dignitaries and celebrities over its history in the context of celebrations on-campus and within the city of Philadelphia. This list includes Governor Ed Rendell, Vice President Al Gore, Grace Kelly, President Ronald Reagan, Bill Cosby, Lech Walesa, President Theodore Roosevelt, President Lyndon B. Johnson, Peter Lynch, Dolly Parton, Chris Matthews, and Rudy Giuliani.
By the 1970s, along with most of the other Ivy League bands, the Penn Band became a scramble band. However, it had begun moving away from the traditional corps style in the 1940s. Its current uniform, however, is an inadvertent nod to the past—it is a near-exact copy of the uniform worn by the freshman band in the early 1930s.
The first one hundred years of the organization's history was recently described in a book from Arcadia Publishing: Images of America:The University of Pennsylvania Band (2006).
Read more about this topic: The University Of Pennsylvania Band
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.”
—Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924)
“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)