Brian Coffill

While out running this weekend, I happened upon a bust of Richard Wagner in Baltimore's Druid Hill Park. While the park is scattered with statues (including a particularly fiery William Wallace), and I have run there quite often, I was surprised to see the Old Sorcerer staring at me across a large field. Wagner's bust reads: First Prize Awarded to The United Singers of Baltimore at the 19th Nat'l Saengerfest Brooklyn N.Y. 1900. Presented to the City of Baltimore. According to

John Philip Sousa, the American "March King," was also a baseball fanatic, often taking the mound to pitch against local ballplayers, bandsmen, or both. The entire post can be read here.

Baseball at the turn of the twentieth century featured a wide variety of characters, both on and off the field, that shaped the game for many years to come. Fanatical "rooters" often added so much color to the experience that they helped to sway the outcome of games via their loud, boisterous chants. In many major league cities, local bands were organized or hired in order to amplify the rooters' energetic shouts and songs. The full post can be read here.

As part of a Masters Thesis dissertation project at the University of Illinois, I undertook a historical investigation, and eventual re-scoring, of H. R. Hempel's Cubs on Parade March and Two-Step, a long-forgotten march celebrating the 1907 World Series Champion Chicago Cubs. This project culminated in the first performance of the march in many years, with the University of Illinois Wind Orchestra, under my direction, performing the re-scored version of the march, in April o