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:
“[John] Brough’s majority is “glorious to behold.” It is worth a big victory in the field. It is decisive as to the disposition of the people to prosecute the war to the end. My regiment and brigade were both unanimous for Brough [the Union party candidate for governor of Ohio].”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“‘Oh beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly,
Play the Dead March as you carry me along;
Take me to the green valley, there lay the sod o’er me,
For I’m a young cowboy and I know I’ve done wrong.”
—Unknown. As I Walked Out in the Streets of Laredo (l. 5–8)
“If all would lead their lives in love like me,
Then bloody swords and armor should not be;
No drum nor trumpet peaceful sleeps should move,
Unless alarm came from the camp of love.”
—Thomas Campion (1567–1620)
“The Washington press corps thinks that Julie Nixon Eisenhower is the only member of the Nixon Administration who has any credibility—and, as one journalist put it, this is not to say that anyone believes what she is saying but simply that people believe she believes what she is saying ... it is almost as if she is the only woman in America over the age of twenty who still thinks her father is exactly what she thought he was when she was six.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)