The UW Marching Band’s grand finale

The annual Varsity Band Spring Concert holds a certain uniqueness for the University of Wisconsin Marching Band. For one, band members aren’t rushing around a football field.  

“The only thing you have to focus on is playing,” says Chaney Chapman, a senior trumpet player.

The UW Marching Band season spans the academic year and hundreds of athletic and hired performances. Often, the band is one piece of the entertainment: performing the halftime show of a football game, filling up the breaks in a basketball or hockey game, delighting attendees of a Badger-filled wedding. But as the grand finale of the season, the Varsity Band Spring Concert serves as an opportunity to perform to an audience that has gathered solely to celebrate the band.

The 50th Spring Concert will be held on April 17 and 18 at the Kohl Center, featuring classic UW–Madison hits alongside the music of Lady Gaga, Rihanna and “Wicked.” According to Director Corey Pompey, the performance gives the band the “chance to let our hair down, sit back and play and enjoy ourselves.” It also demonstrates the growth of individuals and relationships within the band community. And that growth inspires the music. 

“You can hear the musical growth across the academic year,” says Pompey, “from the time everyone shows up in August to our culminating performance — which is what the Spring Concert is.”

Director Corey Pompey wants the Varsity Band Spring Concert audience to leave “humming and skipping.”

By the final performance of the year, the band is “ready to bring the heat, bring the energy and put on a good show.”

Throughout the academic year, the band’s practice and performance schedule varies drastically. With football games in the fall, the band rehearses significantly more to perfect its show. The spring semester brings smaller athletic performances, but also hired events, where the band travels across the state to perform at schools and for weddings and other special occasions.

By the time the band reaches the Spring Concert, it’s a “well-oiled machine,” says senior drum major Caleb Monge.

“We’ve been practicing so much and performing the songs all year,” he says. “So we’re ready to bring the heat, bring the energy and put on a good show.”

While the Spring Concert is less of a physical endeavor than the elaborate marching formations of a football game, the band aims to put on a different kind of spectacle for the audience.

Lasting around two hours, the Spring Concert gives audience members of all ages the opportunity to dance and sing along with a band that will dance and sing right back. Choreographed marching runs through the crowd, and the energy that would be directed to an entire stadium transforms into something more intimate for a close-up audience.  

“I’m able to look out and no matter who I look at, whether I know them or not, everybody has a smile on their face,” says Chapman. “Everybody’s singing the songs, everybody’s dancing, everybody’s captivated by it, and it’s hard not to get wrapped up in it.”

That joy will stay with the audience and also follow senior band members on their path ahead. The Spring Concert marks their final college performance. Along the way, they’ve learned that the purpose of the band, of the performances, is simple: to understand tradition and give it back to the community.

As a member of the band, Monge says, “you [carry on the] long-standing experience of what it means to be at UW. You’re contributing to student life in such a meaningful way.”

“It really teaches you a dedication to something larger than yourself,” adds Chapman.

And for senior clarinet player and assistant drum major Arista Whitson, the huge time commitment of being in the band has been worth every minute.

“It has been my entire UW–Madison experience,” she says. “The closest friends I’ve made are all through band, and when I think back on my favorite memories from undergrad, they all stem somehow from band.”

At the 50th Spring Concert, these seniors and the rest of the UW Marching Band are ready to sing, play, dance and smile their way to the ultimate performance. “We want [the crowd] to figuratively — or if they so choose, literally — leave the venue humming and skipping,” says Pompey. “That’s what it’s all about for us.”