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By Chris Coughlan-Smith Come Fall, someone other than Jerry Luckhardt will climb the ladder to direct the Minnesota Marching Band. Luckhardt is stepping aside after eight remarkable years rebuilding the unit often referred to as “The Pride of Minnesota.” Luckhardt will remain professor of conducting and associate director of bands, but will devote more time to administration, fund-raising, and directing the creation of the band's new home in the proposed TCF Bank Stadium. These steps, Luckhardt says, are necessary to maintain the band's upward momentum and now “really quite stellar” national reputation. Since Luckhardt arrived in 1997, the marching band has blossomed in every way imaginable. Not only has it grown from 180 to 300 students-the majority of them non-music majors-it has better uniforms and instruments, a larger staff, and, perhaps most important, dedicated student leaders who pass on the traditions and spirit to each incoming class. Tim Diem, a Minnesota native and 1992 graduate of the U's Morris campus, will pick up the baton as director of the marching band. “In my five years as his assistant, Jerry's never made me feel like an assistant,” Diem says. “He's got this program running like a great car that he's built from the ground up, letting me help every step of the way. Now he's handing me the keys and saying, 'Here you go. Don't drive it off the road.'" Craig Kirchhoff, renowned director of the band program at the University (which includes all wind ensembles), hired Luckhardt for the job of rebuilding the marching band shortly after coming to the U himself. “The reason that I really wanted him-aside from his musicianship and the other attributes you'd expect-is his ability to work with people,” Kirchhoff says. “Jerry's a problem solver and he has vision. He empowers students to take a lot of responsibility for the success of [a band that] represents spirit and community in a very tangible way.” A graduate of the University of Michigan in his home state, Luckhardt held several college teaching positions before coming to the U. Minnesota talked with Luckhardt this spring about his years leading the band. Q: What kinds of students participate in the marching band? A: We attract exactly the kind of students this school wants. They're passionate about the campus, they know the traditions, they're articulate, they're scholarly. The average GPA last time we checked was 3.6. I'm not sure how they do it. They're giving, we've calculated, 500 hours of time during the regular football season. If you divide that by weeks, it's about 30 hours per week. Game day is an 11- or 12-hour commitment, and from pregame parade until post-game show, they don't sit down for five hours. [When there are home games on consecutive Saturdays], they have to learn a new halftime show in five days. And they memorize the music. That is now part of the fabric. The band will not accept the idea of carrying [sheet]music. Plus, the students are paying to take the course. [Marching band is a one-credit fall semester course.] With tuition, shoes, shirts, instrument deposit, there's an out-of-pocket expense of about $450 for the privilege of being part of the marching band. I feel compelled, given all that, to raise scholarship funds to support these students. Q: What does the student get out of it? A: As students matriculate from the program, I ask them what they value most about the experience. One is the wonderful relationships they've developed-evidenced by the fact that I go to a lot of weddings. They're also very thankful for the opportunities they've had in leadership. Formal leadership positions are by audition, but all the veterans have influence and mentorship roles with the new students. They're also part of the atmosphere of college athletics and they love being part of something bigger than themselves. They're part of the event, a big part of what makes college athletics unique. People really connect with the marching band. When we march down the street I see little bitty kids marching and pretending to be in the band, I see 70-year-olds marching in place, I see smiles form on people's faces. That's a unique and powerful thing to be a part of. Q: How important is it for the band to have a home in TCF Bank Stadium? A: A new facility, a home for the band, is going to have an enormous positive influence on all aspects of the program. We have very much outgrown the current space [in Northrop Auditorium]. It was not built for a 300-piece marching band. . . . Plus, we're sharing space. When the Bolshoi Ballet is in town, for example, we lose our classroom. And if it's raining and we can't go outside and we have five days to prepare intensely important material that is going to be public to 50,000 or 60,000 people, that's problematic. [In TCF Bank Stadium] the marching band will have 30,000 square feet of dedicated space. There will be several large spaces for section rehearsals, and I've been told that our daily practices will be on the playing field. We'd like to create an archive-type room or a lobby where you enter into the history of the band. Plus, we [hope to] return one of the great traditions from Memorial Stadium-marching down University Avenue and into the stadium. When I talk to alumni, they describe that so vividly that I can feel it. When they talk about that, the hair stands up on their necks. Q: What will you miss most as you take on new projects? A: What I will miss is the ability to get to know individual students and to be able to interact with them on a one-on-one basis. Every student has a story. They come from somewhere and they are here for a reason. They have goals and aspirations. To be part of students' lives on that level, I'll miss that. There's a sense of loss about that. But the sense of gain is that I know that I'll have a greater ability to help the program go to that next level, to enjoy its next phase. Q: Do you have a favorite memory over the past eight years, a time when you realized things were really moving in the right direction? A: The first time we went to the Sun Bowl [in 1999]. When you get to the postseason, and you get to play alongside another national band [Oregon], and the fans are realizing that the football program is moving and the band is moving-that was a nice pivotal moment. There was so much energy. I know the band walked away from that trip thinking we had a good thing going. But they also knew that we were not as good as we were going to be, so they went away from that still hungry. We suffered a couple of low spots too. Just before the Sun Bowl, we had 12 students on a trip [to a performance in Rochester, Minnesota] break a policy, and there were consequences for that action. [They lost their spots in the band for the rest of the year as was spelled out in the band's code of conduct.] These students stood up one-by-one, in front of their peers, and apologized and accepted fully what they had done and what it had cost them and the whole program. I have to say that was the defining moment for this band program. What could have been a really negative moment ended up as a very positive one. Everyone put on their suit the next time feeling a little bit differently about the standard by which they operate. And those 12 students, the next year, were all welcomed back, and eight of them were student leaders. They had something to prove. They grew enormously and became real torchbearers for the band. . . . It was a great lesson that there was nothing that we couldn't overcome. There was no obstacle that could keep us from moving this program forward. Chris Coughlan-Smith (B.A. '86) is senior editor of Minnesota. | |||||||||||||
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