USD Symphonic Band prepares for concert, tour

Despite it being Superbowl Sunday, the USD Symphonic Band will be performing their winter concert for the public at 2 p.m. in Aalfs Auditorium.

“The concert is only an hour long, so you can still come, watch the concert and then go home and watch two hours of pregame,” joked director Rolf Olson.

The name of the concert is “Alive” and features a variety of music.

“We named it that because the music is so alive,” Olson said. “It’s like watching a great movie. There’s going to be everything from sadness to love to a chase scene, a fight scene. All of the range of human emotions are going to be shown in this music.”

After the concert, the symphonic band will begin their high school tour on Monday, going to towns within South Dakota to reach out and recruit new members.

“First of all it’s a recruiting tool for us,” Olson said. “I try to pick schools where we get a lot of students from or where current students are from so that they can play for their old band. It’s also an outreach to the schools in the area. We try to serve the mission at USD to be reaching out to the community.”

The band has been participating in high school tours for more than 25 years, Olson said.

The tour serves as a highlight for members of the symphonic band.

“Tour is always an exciting time for us as an ensemble,” said junior and principal trumpet Michael Hoffman. “It’s an opportunity for us to get out of Vermillion and share our talent with other communities.”

Hoffman said he remembers when the band came to his high school to recruit.

“It serves as an effective recruitment tool because I remember USD coming to my high school on their annual Symphonic Band Tour, and I remember being so amazed by their level of skill and professionalism,” he said. “Also, tour is most definitely a bonding experience for us as an ensemble.”

With only three hours a week to practice difficult music, putting together the concert was no easy task.

“Dr. Olson told us last year that the music program is developing and he wanted to take that next step with this music and us,”  said junior Andrew Schuiteman, an alto and soprano saxophone player. “He thinks that we are able to do it. It’s hard because there are a lot of weird chords and difficult passages and it has to be played perfectly for it to sound right.”

Despite this, with only a month to put the concert together, the members are proud of what they’ve accomplished.

“I think that it’s exciting for me because we’ve only had a month to put this music together,” Schuiteman said. “It’s a really cool concert and the music we are playing isn’t easy by any means. I’m excited because I believe the group has been working hard on it and this is kind of us debuting that we can put this concert together in a short amount of time.”

To wrap up the week, the band will be performing at the South Dakota Bandmasters Convention in Brookings. Afterward, they will spend two days recording the music they’ve been playing.

“It is an honor to be invited to play at the convention, and we are so excited to have the opportunity show all of the other band directors of South Dakota who we are as an ensemble and to represent the music department as well as the entire university in the best way possible,” Hoffman said.