Indoor Percussion Ensemble - History

History

Indoor percussion (Drumline) began in 1976 at the Rocori High School in Cold Spring Minnesota, pioneered by Dick Rausch. Over the past 30 years, marching percussion has advanced and moved into auditoriums and gymnasiums as percussion ensembles looked for ways to maintain their skills during the winter months when performing outdoors on football fields was not practical. Following in the footsteps of indoor guard ensembles, indoor percussion ensembles arrange music and motion appropriate for a more intimate setting. The activity is enjoyed throughout the United States and Japan, as Winter Guard International (WGI) provides many regional and national opportunities to compete. Percussion ensembles first appeared in WGI shows in 1992, and the theatrics, sets, and music selection has advanced throughout the activity's history. There are many organizations unaffiliated with WGI that hold smaller regional shows.

Competitive groups are held to specific times and judged on criteria that change every season as technology and creativity blossom. These ensembles compete, but traditionally, the musical sport is treated as a place to grow together as a community, learn new techniques, and enjoy the work done by peers from across the country and locally.

Competition became international when Color Guard Netherlands (CGN) introduced Indoor Percussion in Europe. In 2008 CGN hosted the very first WGI Regional for Percussion outside of North-America.

Read more about this topic:  Indoor Percussion Ensemble

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.
    Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)

    If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.
    Josiah Royce (1855–1916)

    The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.
    Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)