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Most of the best marching programs draw their musicians from their year-round Concert band program. Jazz ensmembles are similarly assembled. Marching season runs from the summer to about Thanksgiving usually.
The Concert Band instrumentation differs due to the fact that there are oboes, bassoons, French horns, and generally less doubling of percussion instruments like snare drums.
Concert Bands have a large body of authentic literature, whereas marching bands usually play arrangements of music written originally for some other musical genre. Some of the composers who have written authentic music for Band include: Copland, Holst, Sousa, Gould, Grainger, Milhaud, Husa, Gunther Schuller and many others. There are some real masterpieces here. This music is usually way too difficult to play when you are moving around. Most good programs aim their Concert bands at this literature. This builds their chops and peaks student interest so that they can play so well on the field.

To "55" - thanks for a great comment. My own reference in my blog to gangs fighting over schoolyard turf was more to suggest that city kids didn't take band rivalries seriously because the rivalries in urban schools were often much more... dangerous? Intense seems to tame a word. Anyway, it was a snotty city-kid comment but what a great story it provoked from you. Wish I'd seen this and read it while we were still on the air!

My own experience is in fireman's parades and holiday parades with a dixieland brass group.
I have been doing this since 1983.
To me, that signifies marching band.

Yeah, Lucia! I played baritone horn in my 120member high school marching band from Jamestown, NY. We were in Santa Claus's band in the '94 Macy's Parade and I remember it like yesterday. I marched for a year at Penn State and played for 97000 people in a stadium so loud you couldn't hear yourself play (let alone the rest of the band).

Loved this piece. Helped bring back the memories. Thanks John!

Need to make a correction about your bloods and crips comment: One of the most incredible and creatively masterful performance Ive ever seen were from LA's former gang members and at risked high-school students who were "saved" through marching bands formed as an outlet or alternative to the gang culture. These groups were fiercely competitive and extremely ingenious to incorporate their rap culture & music as marching tunes. It was a wonderful way for these guys to recruit and communicate to their own peers a different type of music their own network/society would otherwise know. These bands were not isolated to a few schools, they were really part of the inner-city school culture throughout the 90s and it was a wonderful way to liberate us all: culturally and intellectually.

I'm from northeast Ohio and went to a high school with a 250-member marching band. In my one year in the band, I marched in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade; and even now, many years later, the sound of a marching band still makes me excited for autumn and football. I miss it in New York and at times listen to the Ohio State University marching band on my Ipod just to remind me a little of home.

From Matt Moran, of Slavic Soul Party:

Battle of the bklyn drum lines,
Sunday nov 30th 3pm, 1700 fulton street, Brooklyn ny (in Bed Stuy)
be there!

If you think bands are cool, wait until you find out about drum corps. Search YouTube for "2002 Cavaliers Frameworks" or "Blue Devils Hornline" http://www.dci.org