Eagle Band to perform at Rockies-Padres game

The band, headed by CSC band director Sid Shuler, will perform the national anthem to open the game, which begins at 2:10 p.m. Mountain Time.

The opportunity to open the show for a Major League Baseball team didn’t come about by chance, according to Shuler. 

“I started talking to (Athletic Director) Joel Smith a year ago about the possibility of us going to an away football game,” he said. “It hasn’t happened outside of the event two years ago when we went to Dallas.”

Last year’s football schedule didn’t have any workable dates, but Shuler said when he saw this year’s lineup, the CSC-Colorado School of Mines game at Golden, Colorado on Saturday, Sept. 19, looked promising. From his experience at the University of Illinois, Shuler knew that Major League Baseball teams often have college bands come to perform, and a Sept. 20 game on the Rockies’ schedule was the opening for him to contact the team’s front office and make arrangements to play there as well.

“It’s a way to show what the college is able to do, maybe some outreach, advertising and marketing, and a general fun time,” Shuler said of the weekend trip for the Eagle Band, which has about 50 members and includes students who are majoring in music as well as those in other fields of study.

The band will perform throughout the CSC-Mines game, and will play a special arrangement of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at the Rockies’ contest, Shuler said.

“I’ve put a new arrangement in their (band members’) hands. It’s a little bit higher pitch. I think it will showcase what we can do a little better,” he said. “It puts our woodwinds in a key where they can be not too high in the middle section but not too low to be heard.”

The experience of performing in a big stadium before thousands of people will be good experience for the Eagle Band members, and may give some music education students in the group an idea they will be able to use when they are teaching, Shuler said.

“(They) might want to take their own bands (to a Major League Baseball game),” he said.

Timing for the trip works well for students’ schedules, Shuler said, because they can leave early Saturday, play in Golden in the afternoon, spend the night in Denver and enjoy some free time there before the Sunday performance, then get on the bus and be back in Chadron Sunday night.

Planning for the trip has generated interest for the Eagle Band, and CSC’s music program, according to Shuler.

“There’s a lot of excitement buzzing about this,” he said. “I’m hoping this kicks off the year well for the music department in general, because the (Wind Symphony) has a tour in April that I’m setting up now.  We will play at community colleges in Wyoming and hopefully Salt Lake City, and take in a performance by the Utah Symphony.”

For more information about the CSC Eagle Band, and how to purchase lower-priced tickets to the Rockies-Padres game, contact Shuler at 308-432-6322.

—George Ledbetter