The Excelsior Brigade Fife and Drum Corps (aka Excelsior Brigade of Fifes and Drums, Excelsior Brigade, or Western New York Field Music) was founded in 2000 as a combination Ancient Fife and Drum Corps and living history unit dedicated to authentically reproducing the sights and sounds of New York State volunteer militia field musicians as found during the American Civil War.
Each year, the group plays four to six living history events, marches in ten to fifteen fireman's and festival parades and performs in two to four Christmas concerts. The Excelsior Brigade wears authentic reproduction uniforms, accurately representing militia units as delivered to the front lines in early 1861. The leather brogans, wool shell jackets, trousers and kepi hat, the leather belts and cotton suspenders are quality pieces that bring Civil War field music onto 21st Century streets, allowing the corps to march off a fireman's parade and into a reenactment without missing a beat.
The corps plays a wide selection of tunes and duties as played during the war. Duties include reveille, breakfast call, pioneer's march and others. Songs include dozens of favorite tunes from the era with more added each season.
The high level of expertise and skill requires that the group practice year-round for the regular marching season.
Being a combination corps, of Ancient and Reenactor, the corps has some interesting features:
- constant open and anonymous access for members to all financial information
- no dues
- uniforms and instruments provided to members on a loan program
- free lessons
- sheet music and other resources available through the website
Famous quotes containing the words brigade, fife, drum and/or corps:
“Rational free spirits are the light brigade who go on ahead and reconnoitre the ground which the heavy brigade of the orthodox will eventually occupy.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“When we are in health, all sounds fife and drum for us; we hear the notes of music in the air, or catch its echoes dying away when we awake in the dawn.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;”
—Charles Wolfe (1791–1823)
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)