December 2001

Crown Holds Record-Setting Audition Camp!

    Carolina Crown held their audition camp for the 2002 season November 30 - December 2 at Indian Land MS in Ft. Mill.   The weekend was extremely well attended with a turnout of 203 new students from fourteen states and Japan, including 102 percussionists, 76 brass and 25 color guard.  The 203 students was a new Crown record for the three-year-old "new students only" event!

    Executive Director Kevin Smith said, "The auditions went off without a hitch.  The quality of the students just keeps getting better each year, such that we could probably field a very competitive corps from just these new students!  With our veteran members returning to our camp and annual banquet in two weeks, we are expecting the largest first full corps camp in our 13 year history!"

    The weekend camp culminated with a "show-and-tell" performance before over 200 parents, fans, supporters and volunteers, where the prospective members demonstrated their talents and improved performance skills.  The performance event included the front ensemble playing Trepak (from the Nutcracker); the guard doing a little performance featuring flag, weapons and dance work; the brass line playing "America the Beautiful", our "Crown Imperial" on-field warm-up, about a minute of the new ballad for the "Icarus" portion of our mythology show ("One Day I'll Fly Away", from Moulin Rouge), and the corps song "Carolina In My Mind").  The percussion line demonstrated some of their exercises, and then put it together with the brass for a good chunk of the parade march "Semper Fi".

    A lot of parents, volunteers, fans and band directors were on hand for the opening meetings/Q&A, working the food truck, and for "Show &Tell". Support Services Coordinator Teri Brinson had people falling over each other in the food truck, so we were even able to get some of the volunteers to prepare our annual holiday card for mailing and cut practice flag material.  A big thanks to all the volunteers that assisted with the event!

     Throughout the weekend Kevin and the rest of the faculty/administrative team received many compliments about the camp from both students and their parents.  Some of the actual feedback included:

    "My name is Ryan Burd.  I attended the audition camp this past weekend and I just wanted to let you all know what a wonderful time I had, how much fun it was, and how much I learned.  I think you have a really organized way of running the camp and it seems like you really care about the students learning and becoming better musicians.  I walked away yesterday feeling like I had learned a ton and gained so much from the experience.  I am really looking forward to the next camp.  Thanks for a wonderful first drum corps experience."  

    "My son Daniel had a great time and said he learned more in one weekend than he could have imagined.  Thanks for your excellent organization." (Roger Gray - parent)

    I just want to let yall know I had a good time at the camp!  I have never gone to a camp like that!  Yes I will be the next weekend no doubt! Hopefully I will always be there!  (Karuba Hilliard - student)

    Matt had a great weekend and plans to attend Camp on Dec. 15.   It was great fun last weekend.  We were impressed with the entire organization and your ability to work with so many and accomplish so much.  (Teresa Bradshaw - parent)

    My son, Allen Klaes, truly enjoyed the weekend at Indianland Middle School, cold showers and all!  Our thanks to all of you who made this possible.  We appreciate the quest for quality that you inspire in our young folks. (Patricia Phillips - parent)

    I just wanted to drop in a quick word to say that I had a great weekend. It was my first drum corps experience and I had a great time.  Thanks for keeping me informed and prepared with the emails and such.  I'm looking forward to the next camp! (Russell Bryant - student)

    First off I would like to say that I had an extremely great time at camp this past weekend, and that I can't wait until time for the next camp, and to (hopefully) be a part of the horn line this year! (David Brown - student)
    
    Hey guys, hope you all enjoyed the weekend as much as I did.... It was a great learning and growing experience.  I look forward to the Dec camp, and adding the Vets into the mix. (Kenny Mills - student)

    The next rehearsal camp for Carolina Crown will be our first "full corps" camp of the year to be held the weekend of December 14-16, 2001 at Fort Mill High School in Ft. Mill, SC.  "Show-and-Tell," a free and open to the public performance event, will be held on Sunday, December 16th at about 12:00 noon.

Crown Adds New Visual Designer

Executive Director Kevin Smith recently announced a new addition to the Carolina Crown faculty and design team.  Ryan George has been selected as the corps' visual designer for 2002.

Ryan presently lives with his wife Sarah in Lexington, KY where he is finishing up a degree in music education at the University of  Kentucky.  He is an active visual designer, arranger and consultant throughout the U.S., presently writing for high school bands in South Carolina (at Irmo HS, his Alma mater), Kentucky, Missouri, and Texas.   In addition, he does the visual and music designs for the University of Kentucky Marching Band.  His drum corps experience includes performing with the Cadets of Bergen County and the Concord Blue Devils, as well as being on the visual team for the 2001 Phantom Regiment.  Aside from the music world, Ryan enjoys traveling, cooking, reading and UK basketball!

Please help us welcome Ryan to the Carolina Crown family!

Volunteer Profile - Keith Miller

    Keith Miller practically was born into the Carolina Crown family.  He started marching (trombone) as a 9th grader at Myers Park HS.  He played in the wind ensemble, orchestra, and jazz band as well as the Charlotte Youth Symphony.  Fellow Carolina Crown charter member and board member Mekel Rogers recalls, "We both went to the first-ever Crown audition together with several other MPHS students.  He had fun getting used to playing with the valves on his euphonium instead of a slide.  Gradually the rest of the MPHS crowd dropped out until just the two of us remained.  We were determined to see the year out!"  And so Keith at age 16 was one of the 61 members of the very first Carolina Crown!

    Upon finishing the inaugural 1990 season with Carolina Crown Keith returned to MPHS for his senior year.  He then went on to Appalachian State University a year later and was there for two years before transferring to UNC - Chapel Hill.  He marched with both the ASU Marching Mountaineers and the UNC-CH Marching and Basketball Bands.  While in the UNC band he met Melanie Barnett (a percussionist graduate of Dorman HS) and upon graduating they moved to Charlotte.  They were married in 1997 and now live in Indian Trail, NC.

    When you speak of Keith, it's generally said "Keith and Melanie".  In 1998 they began their work on the NightBEAT committee.  They both jumped in to take over the NB ticket committee.  " And what a grand job they did," says board member and longtime NightBEAT chairman Doug Madar.  "They streamlined procedures, made us computer savvy, and made one of the hardest committees run like a finely tuned engine."   When they conquered the ticket committee, they split up to conquer other committees. Keith evolved into the NightBEAT co-chairperson and Mel took on the reception, marketing and volunteers.  As many of us noticed this year, NightBEAT ran as smooth as ever, with minimal problems.  Doug continues, "It has been a treat and an honor to mentor two of the nicest people in the whole world.  This is one of the first years we actually had to turn away volunteers at NightBEAT."  But this story is far from over!  Keith has taken over as the NightBEAT chairperson for 2002!

    Keith's work is not just limited to NightBEAT either.  He has also been on Crown's Board of Directors since 1999 and has served as vice president of the Executive Committee over the past year. And we are sure that Keith and Melanie's commitment to Carolina Crown is just beginning!  You see, just a few short weeks ago they became parents of a son, Zachery, whom we are sure will age-out of the brass line in 2022, after many years of marching!

    Well one thing is for sure; Carolina Crown is very fortunate to have the entire Miller family as such dedicated volunteers!

Carolina Crown Hosts NCMEA Booth

Carolina Crown hosted an informational booth at the 2001 North Carolina Music Educator's Association Conference in Winston-Salem, NC on November 11-13, 2001. 

The booth, re-designed for this conference with the assistance of Carolina Crown Board Member Steve Tant, featured a section for Carolina Crown Drum and Bugle Corps as well as NightBEAT and TheCrownStore.

Several hundred music educators, representing elementary through college level band, choir, and orchestra teachers attended the three-day conference.  Vendor's from all over the country set-up booths in the exhibition hall including fundraising corporations, travel companies, and music vendors.

Carolina Crown plans to also host an informational booth at the South Carolina Music Educator's Conference in Charleston, SC in February, 2002.

A Message From the President

Dear Crown Family:

Virtually all the benchmarks and metrics used to measure our progress indicate that Carolina Crown is on track for its best year in history.  Speaking of history, did you know that DCI celebrates its 30^th anniversary in 2002?  Well, most of you probably do.  However, you may not realize that the Carolina Crown organization will complete its 15^th year in 2002.  That’s right—our organization has been in existence for exactly one-half of the life of DCI.  Although our corps first marched in 1990, the organization (formerly known as the Charlotte Drum Corps Assn.) actually started in 1988.

I am proud to say that we have built an organization which is admired by many in the drum corps activity, and our 15^th year promises to be the best yet.  So what is the secret of our success?   Actually, it can be summed up in this formula… Dedicated volunteers + talented staff + ambitious members + generous supporters + sound management = Carolina Crown success.

I thank each of you for your contribution to the Crown recipe.  Nonetheless, we can always use a few more “ingredients.”  In fact, the executive board recently formed two key committees in the areas of Revenue and Finance to help sustain our long-term growth and success.  Fresh ideas are essential, and we would love to have yours!   If you would like to learn more about these committees, please call or e-mail me. 

Here’s to 15 more great years of Crown excellence.

Happy Holidays,

Bill Loelius

President

Carolina Crown

E-mail: wloelius@aol.com

Home:  (704) 545-2765

Work:  (704) 573-8235

2002 Mythology Show Taking Shape

The Carolina Crown program design team members Bill Register, Marty McCartt, Paul Rennick and Michael Shapiro met with Executive Director Kevin Smith in late September to discuss options for the corps' 2002 show. During that meeting the mythology show concept was explored and unanimously agreed upon.  Since that meeting, the team has been "storyboarding" the show and developing musical and visual ideas.  Although many ideas are still tentative, the team decided upon basing the production on four different Greek myths highlighting the figures: Zeus, Eros, Icarus and Medusa.

Although not finalized, the tentative music for the show and the respective Greek myth includes:

1.  "Zeus" - music from Samuel Barber's "Second Essay"

2.  "Eros" - a light and playful tune, TBD

3.  "Icarus" - the ballad from Moulin Rouge, "One Day I'll Fly Away" by Will Jennings and Joe Sample

4.  "Medusa" - a closer possibly based on a Samuel Barber "Medea" framework and ostinato in a contemporary, high-energy setting, possibly with themes from the previous three productions.

So what is mythology?  It is an organized collection of stories (i.e., "myths") by which we explain our beliefs and our history. Beneath the story lines, myths usually confront major issues such as the origin of humanity and its traditions, and the way in which the natural and human worlds function on a profound, universal level. Other myths, however, seem merely to narrate the deities' daily activities -- their love affairs and pleasures, their jealousies and rages, their ambitions and schemes, and their quarrels and battles.

Mythology serves many purposes:

1. Myths grant continuity and stability to a culture. They foster a shared set of perspectives, values, history -- and literature, in the stories themselves. Through these communal tales, we are connected to one another, to our ancestors, to the natural world surrounding us, and to society; and, in the myths which have universal (i.e., archetypal) themes, we are connected to other cultures.

2. Myths present guidelines for living. When myths tell about the activities and attitudes of deities, the moral tone implies society's expectations for our own behaviors and standards. In myths, we see archetypal situations and some of the options which can be selected in those situations; we also perceive the rewards and other consequences which resulted from those selections.

3. Myths justify a culture's activities. Through their authoritativeness and the respected characters within them, myths establish a culture's customs, rituals, religious tenets, laws, social structures, power hierarchies, territorial claims, arts and crafts, holidays and other recurring events, and technical tips for hunting, warfare, and other endeavors.

4. Myths give meaning to life. We transcend our common life into a world in which deities interact with humans, and we can believe that our daily actions are part of the deities' grand schemes. In our difficulties, the pain is more bearable because we believe that the trials have meaning; we are suffering for a bigger cause rather than being battered randomly. And when we read that a particular deity experienced something which we are now enduring -- perhaps a struggle against "evil forces" -- we can feel that our own struggle might have a similar cosmic or archetypal significance, though on a smaller scale.

5. Myths explain the unexplainable. They reveal our fate after death, and the reasons for crises or miracles, and other puzzles -- and yet they retain and even encourage an aura of mystery. Myths also satisfy our need to understand the natural world; for example, they might state that a drought is caused by an angry deity. This purpose of mythology was especially important before the advent of modern science, which offered the Big Bang theory to replace creation myths, and it gave us the theory of evolution to supplant myths regarding the genesis of humanity. And yet, science creates its own mythology, even as its occasional secular barrenness threatens to strip us of the healthful awe, which other types of mythology engender.

6. Myths offer role models. In particular, children pattern themselves after heroes; comic books and Saturday-morning cartoons depict many archetypal characters, such as Superman and Wonder Woman. Adults, too, can find role models, in the stories of deities' strength, persistence, and courage.

Ancient myths live in our culture. We find references to those myths in many contemporary words and expressions, such as Pandora's box, Oedipus complex, nymph, and Olympian. Other words derived from mythology include adonis (from Adonis), aurora (from Aurora), chlorophyll (from Chloris), chronology (from Kronos), discipline (from Disciplina), discord (from Discordia), eros (from Eros), fate (from Fate), fauna (from Faunus), fidelity (from Fides), flora (from Flora), fortune (from Fortuna), fraud (from Fraus), Hades (from Hades), Hell (from Hel), hygiene (from Hygieia), jovial (from Jove), liberty (from Libertas), lunar (from Luna), morphine (from Morpheus), mortality (from Mors), mute (from Muta), narcissism (from Narcissus), nemesis (from Nemesis), ocean (from Oceanus), -- and the names of the planets, and some of the months (including Janus for January), etc. Mars (the Roman war god) is remembered in words such as Mars (the planet), March (the month), and martial (as in martial arts).

Our modern society has its own myths. Some authors say that our society lacks a vigorous mythology; they believe that this lack can cause a sense of meaninglessness, estrangement, rootlessness, and the cold brittleness of a life devoid of reverence and awe. Other authors assert that we do have a mythology -- in certain concepts (such as "progress") and in our larger-than-life celebrities (e.g., Mother Teresa as the goddess of compassion, Albert Einstein as the god of the intellect and the imagination, and Bill Gates as the god of commerce). "Screen goddesses Marilyn Monroe and Madonna incarnate the alluring qualities of Aphrodite. Aristotle Onassis expressed the wheeling-and-dealing Zeus qualities that built a shipping empire, while Muhammad Ali called on the aggressive instinct of Ares, the god of war, every time he stepped into the boxing ring." (As Above So Below, copyright 1992 by New Age Journal.) The media enlarges certain people to mythical proportions, and we each do the same (often by projecting the "Hero" archetype onto other people). Corporations have a mythology, in their "corporate culture." There is a mythology in every group -- our social club, our family, our profession, our subculture, our ethnic group, our religion and denomination, our city, our neighborhood, our friendships, etc. Our mythology changes as our culture changes -- from one generation to the next, from one presidential administration to the next, from one decade to the next.

Good Morning, Carolina Crown!

    2002 is a new day for Carolina Crown, a new chapter in what has already become a very successful story.  We have come so far in 12 years, and this—our 13^th—promises to continue the tradition of excellence that has been a trademark of the organization.  We recently kicked off the season with the audition camp for new members, and the weekend was highly successful.  We had record turnouts and an incredible amount of talent in those who came to check out the organization and audition for a spot in the 2002 Carolina Crown. 

    The hornline learned a tremendous amount of music, including about a minute of this summer’s ballad, Icarus, which already is giving us goose bumps.  The percussion section had the largest amount of people trying out, and their talent did not go unnoticed as they showcased their weekend’s efforts in Sunday’s performance.  The color guard learned difficult work in one day, and their hard work paid off in a very good showing at the camp’s end.  All in all, the weekend ran smoothly thanks to the organization of the administration team, the scores of volunteers who did a great job in every imaginable way, the help of student leaders who assisted in various roles, and the cooperation and hard work of prospective members eager to join this organization. 

    The audition camp was just the first in a series of winter camps, and we hope and encourage those who are trying out to attend them all and keep working hard.  Our next camp is December 14-16, and will include all returning veterans, making this the first full camp of 2002.

    So as we begin this new season, let us strive to continue the tradition of excellence and the high standards that have been set by those who marched before us.  If the audition camp is any indication, this should be a spectacular year! 

    So, good morning, Carolina Crown.  It’s time to get up and get going—another season waits!

David Roth, 2002 Drum Major

Dear Carolina Crown Supporter:

It is hard to believe another joyous holiday season is upon us!  As I am sure it is for you, this time of year is always very special to Carolina Crown.  The warm wishes and gifts received from fantastic supporters like YOU, have helped provide our nearly 1000 alumni with an experience they will remember for a lifetime!   

Last year, many of our friends continued this holiday tradition by responding to our call for assistance in replacing some of our brass instruments.  However, unlike nearly ten years earlier when we purchased a few horns in batches over a couple of years, we ultimately decided it was best for the organization to purchase a complete set of brand-new instruments all at once. 

We knew at that time that raising enough money to purchase the necessary instruments to outfit a 64-member horn line was not something that could be accomplished with just one fund drive!  However, through your generosity we were able to accomplish our goal of at least making a sizable down payment on the complete set! 

And now the second phase of our plan is also nearing completion.  I am very happy to tell you that to date we have sold nearly two-thirds of our old horns and placed the corresponding income in a fund strictly reserved for retiring the outstanding balance on the loan we took out.

Which brings us to the third and final phase of our plan.  You have seen Carolina Crown grow and mature before your very eyes.  Certainly, you realize that it could not have been done without our supporters “stepping up” each and every year as we tried to enhance the experience of our members.  So now, we need your help once more to pay off the loan on our brass instruments this year and get out from under this financial liability! 

         So please, during this season of giving, dig down deep and give to Carolina Crown’s Holiday Fund Drive!  Examine the enclosed card and return your gift by mail to Carolina Crown, 227A Main St., Ft. Mill, SC 29715, or via email to crown@carolinacrown.org.   

With your help, we can make the spirit of this holiday season last for years to come!  In addition, if you donate at least at the $250 level, your name will appear permanently affixed to the case of one of the new horns you helped to purchase, further identifying your support of our members!

Best Wishes for a happy holiday season and a great 2002, from the Carolina Crown family to yours!

Sincerely,

Kevin Smith

Executive Director

YES, I want to make Carolina Crown’s holiday wish come true!  Please use my tax-deductible contribution to help pay off our new set of brass instruments.

 Name __________________________________________________

 Address ________________________________________________

 City ____________________________ State ______ Zip _________

 Email _________________________ Telephone (_____)__________

_____  I have enclosed my gift in full.

_____  I have enclosed half of my gift.  Please bill the remainder on 3/1/02.

Payment   ____ Check  ____ Visa  ____ MC  ____ AMEX  

Card #_____________________________ Exp.________

Name (as appears on card) ________________________

Signature _______________________________________

 HOLIDAY FUND DRIVE LEVELS OF GIVING

 __ $50 Loyal Subject of the Crown:  Gift –  Carolina Crown Logo T-shirt

 __ $100 Member of the Royal Family:  Gift – above, plus a Carolina Crown Logo Sweatshirt

 __ $250 Baron/Baroness:  Gift – above, plus Your Name engraved on a Horn Case

 __ $500 Duke/Duchess:  Gift – above, plus 2 NightBEAT VIP Tickets & Crown’s new “2nd 5 Years” CD

 __ $1000 Prince/Princess:  Gift – above, plus 2 DCI World Championship Tickets & an Embroidered Carolina Crown Logo Jacket

 __ $5000 King/Queen:  Gift – above, plus special recognition of the generosity of You or Your Company at NightBEAT, etc.

 __  Other:  Gift - Carolina Crown 15 Minute Prepaid Phone Card

 Make checks payable to: Carolina Crown, 227A Main St., Ft. Mill, SC 29715.  Carolina Crown is an IRS 501 c3 not-for-profit organization, so remember your company’s matching grants!