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:
“We hear the Secretary of State boasting of his brinkmanship—the art of bringing us to the edge of the abyss.”
—Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965)
“The university is no longer a quiet place to teach and do scholarly work at a measured pace and contemplate the universe. It is big, complex, demanding, competitive, bureaucratic, and chronically short of money.”
—Phyllis Dain (b. 1930)
“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)
“A torchlight procession marching down your throat.”
—John Louis O’Sullivan (1813–1895)
“And the heavy night hung dark
The hills and waters o’er,
When a band of exiles moored their bark
On the wild New England shore.”
—Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1783–1835)