In the DCE Close Up series you will meet the DCE personnel. Who are these people behind the scenes who offer their leasure time to run drum corps events? In this episode we'll meet Nicole Matthijsse.
A visit to four European countries in four days, a true 'lightning visit'. Three representatives of The Glassmen Drum & Bugle Corps recently visited Europe to discuss details about the tour which the corps will be making in June.
Following Xpression's successful promotion to Class A, a new website has been designed and launched for the guard. Created by Steeve (ex-member of La Scintillante) and Jérôme Capoen (Showband USA Staff), this new website has been created with updated multimedia features, and thanks to Isabelle of Showband USA's staff, the site is
accessible in both French and English.
A copy of the agreement approved by DCUK, BYBA and Northern Star has been made available in relation to Open Age Corps based within the UK. Due to the perceived threat and potential conflicting interests of open age units within the youth marching activity in the UK, it has been agreed that should any such unit wish to hold membership of either BYBA or DCUK, the unit should agree to uphold the principles of the youth activity.
In the DCE Close Up series you will meet the DCE personnel. Who are these people behind the scenes who offer their leasure time to run drum corps events? In this episode we'll meet David Baden.
Over the last year the drum corps activity has been faced with the issue of open age corps in the United Kingdom. An agreement has been formulated that will provide a blue-print for the way forward in terms of relations between the youth organisations of DCUK and BYBA and the open age activity in the UK.
Last week the videoclips from the DCE Championships 2005 were published on the download page of the DCE website. Within four days after the clips were added, fans dowloaded them 5,000 times from the server.
Drum Corps United Kingdom has announced most of the venues for the 2006 summer season. The season will consist of eight events from June to September, plus the 2006 British Drum Corps Championships in the weekend of September 30th/October 1st.
Drum Corps International has announced the 12 corps that will air in the 2006 DCI Classic Countdown. More than 7,000 drum corps fans swamped the polls this year.
The top 12 corps to be featured in this year's DCI Classic Countdown will be unveiled this Friday, February 17th, on DCI.org. More than 7,000 drum corps fans swamped the polls this year.
On 11th and 12th February, three bands met at the coast of the North-Sea over the weekend for rehearsal. The German groups Seadogs Drum & Mallet Corps from Brookmerland and the Music Corps of the fire brigade Esens are planning a musical cooperation. Instructors of the Blue Diamonds Drum & Bugle Corps helped by sending some instructors.
As from today, the video clips of the DCE Championships 2005 will be available for downloading from the media page of this website. A brief fragment of a few minutes can be seen for all 24 performances.
Northern Star Drum & Bugle Corps from Leeds - England have announced a new partnership with Tree Works Chimes of Nashville, Tennessee, that will see the 2005 British Youth Band Association Champions and Drum Corps Europe runners-up using the TreeWorks Chimes for their 2006 season.
In the weekend of 4th-5th February, Drum Corps Germany and Drum Corps Europe jointly organised the second edition of the annual training weekend for European judges. Judges from Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands took part in the training course and agreed afterwards that it again proved to be a particularly instructive and practical clinic.
The Kidsgrove Scouts have announced a strengthening of their partnership with Dynasty for the 2006 season which includes a new marching brass line. Over the last weekend the Scouts took delivery of new Bb trumpets, baritones, tubas and F mellophones.
The Yokohama Scouts are the new Champions of the Drum Corps Japan Championships. Seven corps participated in the competition. Last year's Champions, the Yokohama Inspires, became the runners-up.
Do you have news from your corps? Send it to Drum Corps Europe, and we will publish your news on this European drum corps news portal. Attention from European drum corps fans guaranteed!
The Troopers celebrated the grand opening of the brand new Trooper Center in Casper - Wyoming, this past weekend. The building was built specifically for the Troopers by the McMurry Foundation.
Drum Corps Europe is currently working on video clips of the DCE Championships 2005. The clips, of all the Championship participants, will soon be available on the DCE website. Going by the number of e-mails recently received on this topic, it appears that many of you are looking forward to seeing the clips.
Due to many reasons, Pegasus Drum & Bugle Corps from Havant/Waterlooville have decided to call it a day. The corps has been involved in DCUK and BYBA for over 10 years and have had a great time and experience.
The weekend of 27-29th January, the Northern Star Drum & Bugle Corps held their first camp of 2006, a year that everyone at the corps is looking forward to coming off of their most succesful season to date in 2005.
Black Knights Drum & Bugle Corps from Brighton are thrilled to announce the arrival of their new equipment courtesy of Dynasty. They took delivery last weekend of a new set of brass instruments and marching percussion which sees the xorps change to open key instrumentation for the 2006 competitive season.
Following a proposal put forward by the recent DCUK Task Force and the decision taken at the January Board of Trustees meeting, from Monday 6th February the format of the DCUK/WGUK Discussion Group will be changed.
Drum Corps International has posted a special announcement in the Video Vignette section of it's Season Pass website. The announcement marks the official christening of the Rose Bowl and Pasadena - California, as the site of the 2007 Drum Corps International World Championships.
The new owner of the popular website Drum Corps Planet is John M. Donovan. There has been speculation about and interest in who the new owner of the site would be, when founder George Dixon sold DCP a few months ago.
The Glassmen Drum & Bugle Corps has announced the performance schedule for their historic trip to Europe in June of 2006. In celebration of their 45th anniversary, the Glassmen will be spending fourteen days abroad on a tour of France, Belgium, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom bringing their unique style of concerts, entertainmaint clinics and outdoor field performances.
The Kidsgrove Scouts will organise a percussion clinic with special guest Jeff Moore. A unique opportunity for percussionists to witness first hand an accomplished musician demonstrating his craft in the UK. Professor Moore will first present and discuss approaches to a range of marching and orchestral percussion instruments.
'At long last Vito Corleone has entered the drum corps arena... And he's wearing blue.' The searing epic of The Godfather takes a powerful turn as the Blue Devils bring visions of the best selling novel and award winning motion picture to the field.
Showband USA from Hellemmes-Lille (France) is pleased to present its 2006 uniform for the Xpression color guard. This uniform will be introduced on February 4th 2006 at the CGN (Color Guard Nederland) competition in Goes.
Northern Star Drum & Bugle Corps from Leeds - UK are pleased to announce their new logo and website. Northern Star decided to freshen up their image as they continue to push the corps forward on all fronts into 2006.
Mark Tarrant conducted a research study about when critisism is and when it is not tolerated in drum corps and marching band. He published a report about the survey.
The DVDs of the DCE Championships 2005 will be ready by the end of next week. The release date of mid January could not be met, but we're in the final stages of the post production.
A new drum & bugle corps has been formed in Rhode Island. Northern Light Drum & Bugle Corps want to become the finest junior corps ever produced in the state of Rhode Island by emplying the finest instructional staff to educate the brightest high school and college-aged musicians in the New England area.
Mark 'The Captain' Cresswell from the UK based Kidsgrove Scouts has succesfully auditioned for a spot in the Madison Scouts Drum & Bugle Corps. Mark completed two auditions during November and December and has been offered a spot playing euphonium for the 2006 summer season.
Drum Corps Germany and Drum Corps Europe will be jointly organising the second edition of the training weekend for European judges, to be held over the weekend of 4th-5th February. Last year, the judges training was organised by DCE in the Netherlands. Around 20 participants will be coming from Germany, the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands. The clinic will be held in Neustadt am Rübenberge, in the host country Germany.
To build on the success of our first national week in 2005, The British Federation of Yout Marching Band Organisations (BFYMBO) are again asking bands throughout the UK to 'throw open' their rehearsal doors and invite local young people to visit.
The DCUK Board of Trustees recently accepted a recommendation from the 2005 Task Force for an annual meeting of all Corps Directors. The first of these sessions will be held at Park House, Glenfield, Leicester on Saturday 29th April 2006 running from 10.00 am to 3.30 pm.
The results of the 2005 DCUK Task Force held last November have been published on the DCUK website. All rule changes agreed will come into effect for the following 2006 season. One of the proposals that passed is to permit any form of brass instrumentation.
It seems that Italy has discovered color guard. The Millennium Marching Band from Verdello and Giuseppe Verdi from Lonate already have a guard, and two other Italian marching bands have announced that they will be setting up a guard group next year. European guard instructors are being asked to help with this.
2005 was a record year for the DCE website. The website was visited more than 328,000 times. Compared with 2004, this is an increase of 90,000 visits or 38 percent. What is striking is the huge increase in the number of American visitors.
During the autumn and winter months Cadence from Guildford have undergone a huge recruitment drive. With door to door leaflets, four school assemblies and a live show on BBC Southern Counties Radio their numbers have grown from around 18 to about 62 youngsters.
Drum Corps International presents the return of the 2006 DCI Classic Countdown. On Thursday, April 27th, the top 12 shows voted on by drum corps fans will be shown in real-life proportion in select theatres across the US.
Drum Corps France (DCF), the federation for drum corps and marching bands of France, has begun 2006 with the launch of a brand new website! DCF Webmaster Bertrand Chauvin has spent long hours to ready the new official site for the public.
The Senators Drum and Bugle Corps based in Eastleigh Hampshire have released a new look website for 2006. The site builds on the information and news service which was previously available and in addition has many new exciting features for new and returning visitors including music downloads and testimonials along with member case studies and performance reports.
2005 was another great year for drum corps in Europe. We saw the Blue Devils coming to Europe, the World Music Contest in Kerkrade, and the most succesful DCE season so far. Beatrix, Strängnäs, DrumSpirit and Jong Beatrix became European Champions, The Senators topped the DCUK competition, Northern Star won BYBA Division I, and Wölper Löwen became German Champion for the first time in their history. We listed some highlights of the year in this article.