The “Mid-year of 1969” will feature Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Beatles, and The Fifth Dimension.
The show incorporates game plans by the band’s previous chief, Scott Boerma, who currently coordinates Western Michigan University’s band. Colleague Director Richard Frey made the drills for the exhibition.
The band will play during halftime Saturday. Michigan will take on Middle Tennessee at 7:30 p.m. in Ann Arbor.
The Michigan Marching Band is open to all UM students including Dearborn and Flint. If a person is a transfer student, current UM student, or incoming freshman, then they are welcome to audition for the band.
In the oldest tradition of 19th-century Americana, the origin of the Michigan Marching Band was at a grassroots student effort. In November 1896, the University of Michigan band organized its first rehearsal. At the best of the University President James Burrill Angell said that the newly-created band has proved itself to be a “sincere venture,” the UM Band gave its first graceful public performance and appearance in 1897 at old University Hall for the Law School’s annual celebration of Washington’s birthday. The first appearance on a football ground was in the late autumns of 1898.
The history of the Michigan band began in the late autumns of 1896 when a seventeen-year-old guy from Ann Arbor, Harry dePont, called all musicians on campus to attend a meeting held to organize a band for the University at the campus. The idea of a University band was not new. In fact, in previous years, there had been various attempts to start up a band on the University campus. All of these endeavors had failed due to a lack of support and cooperation. To DuPont’s delight, nearly thirty musicians collected in Harris Hall on November 13, 1896, for an initial setup where Ray P. Warren was elected as the conductor of the band. Warren, a talented cornetist, was a vocal student at the Ann Arbor School of Music, a private institution run by the University Musical Society at the time.