BU Bands: Celebrating the “Heartbeat of the University”
Aaron Goldberg directing the BU Pep Band at the 2019 Women’s Beanpot Championship, when BU captured the trophy for the first time since becoming a varsity sport. Photo by Ally Kallfelz (COM’21)
BU Bands: Celebrating the “Heartbeat of the University”
Boston University celebrates a century of pep-building and music-making
This article was first published in BU Today on October 20, 2022. By Joel Brown.
Let’s get this out of the way first: this weekend’s BU Bands Centennial Celebration is the bands’ 102nd anniversary, not their 100th. Blame COVID for the delay. But it ought to be a rip-roaring, drum-banging, trumpet-blowing, high-stepping celebration anyway, because the bands mean so much to BU.
“The band is the thumping heartbeat of the University,” says Aaron Goldberg, BU director of Athletic Bands, Big Band conductor, and a College of Fine Arts senior lecturer in music. “It is audible school spirit and pride. Campus would be thriving, but a lot duller without the BU Bands.”
The anniversary celebration, which begins Thursday, is timed to coincide with Family & Friends Weekend and includes concerts, a reception, and a dinner. (See sidebar for details.) There’s also a men’s hockey game, where the Pep Band will do its best, as usual, to whip the rabid Terrier fans of the Dog Pound into a rooting, screaming frenzy.
It all started back in 1920 with the BU ROTC Band, but the roster of BU Bands has grown and changed. Now the Pep Band is the largest and busiest of the BU ensembles, with 125 gigs a year and roughly the same number of members, Goldberg says. The lineup now encompasses the Marching Band, the Pep Band, the Winter Drumline, the Winter Guard, the Scarlet Band, the All-Campus Orchestra, the Concert Band, the BU Big Band, Jazz Workshop, multiple Jazz Ensembles, and the Symphonic Chorus.
In addition to games and concerts, they perform at events from fundraisers to Move-in, the Matriculation march to Commencement, and national exhibitions to high school showcases and an annual show for the tourists at Faneuil Hall.
“For generations of students, the BU Bands have provided a soundscape for everyday life at the University, accompanying them through their careers as Terriers,” says Gregory Melchor-Barz, director of the School of Music and a CFA professor of music. “The core mission of the BU Bands program allows the CFA School of Music to extend its outreach beyond the concert halls and practice rooms to the entirety of the student experience at BU.”
It happens under the banner Music for All, offering students in all majors the chance to keep on playing the instrument they learned before coming to the University. Many students play in more than one band, and about 80 percent of those involved are not music majors, says Goldberg, who plays trombone and euphonium in his spare time.
If you think carrying a heavy academic load and playing in the bands would be tough sledding, meet James Robson (ENG’20,’25), a longtime stalwart of the woodwind sections, who plays clarinet, flute, and saxophone. Currently he finds time for rehearsals and performances with the Concert Band and the Saxophone Ensemble, all while working towards a PhD in biomedical engineering.
“Music has always been a really big part of my life, and going into my undergrad at BU, I realized very quickly in my first semester that just doing engineering made me lose a really big part of who I am,” Robson says. “So I continued that engagement in the BU Bands.
“Playing in these types of ensembles really allowed me to thrive, I think, academically and in my engineering courses, and I also have this group that I could look forward to every Monday and Wednesday to come in and play with. It’s really relaxing playing my instruments, and for me it’s an opportunity to, in a way, escape from all of the stresses that occur in a PhD program. I made time for it because it’s really important to me, and I love the group of people.”