'The Year of the Dragon' from The Cadets and Sacramento Mandarins for a drum corps Lunar New Year

Happy Lunar New Year! So long, Year of the Water Rabbit! Welcome to the Year of the Wood Dragon! I'm celebrating this year's holiday differently than I have before, but in a way I've observed many others, through drum corps, thanks to two DCI corps playing "The Year of the Dragon" by Philip Sparke. I begin with Spotlight: 1997 Cadets from Drum Corps International (DCI), which features the opening of the show with the last movement of the piece.

Placing between the Devils and Vanguard were the Cadets of Bergen County with their production “Celebration,” based entirely on the music of British composer Philip Sparke. Originally, Sparke was mostly known in British brass band circles, resulting in a number of awards, honors, and commissions from brass band associations in western Europe, as well as Australia and New Zealand.

DCI has the rest of the description, written by the late Michael Boo, on its website.

Most of the show was devoted to the three movements of Sparke’s “Year of the Dragon,” originally a 1984 commission for a championship Welsh brass band, later arranged by the composer for concert band. Sparke conceived the work as a virtuosic piece to display the talents of each of the band’s instrumental sections.

Just as the lion is the animal symbol of England and the unicorn is the animal symbol of Scotland, the dragon is the animal symbol of Wales, so this music is not originally about the Chinese Zodiac sign. That didn't stop a historically Chinese-American corps, the Sacramento Mandarins, from playing it in 2002. Watch Mandarins 2002 DCI Championships, uploaded by the corps to its YouTube channel.

2002 DCI Championships. Program: Year of the Dragon. Repertoire: Year of the Dragon, Montage, A London Overture, Diversions.

The Mandarins adopted it as the corps song and played it 20 years later in Year of the Dragon, again uploaded by the corps itself.

Mandarins Brass and Mandarins Alumni Brass perform the corps' anthem, Year of the Dragon at the 2022 DCI Capital Classic.

The Mandarins have definitely made the music their own.

Those are the official uploads. Follow over the jump for the unofficial uploads, previews of coming attractions, and my traditional salutations I use to end my Lunar New Year posts.

I begin the unofficial uploads of full shows with Cadets of Bergen County 1997 Full Show (Celebration) 2nd Place.


Here's the late Michael Boo's description of the details of the show.

The first 20 seconds of the show commenced with the full corps in a semi-block triangle form up front, with the horns playing a continuous series of rapid eighth notes that should have stressed the joints of the players’ fingers. The color guard costuming was intentionally less theatrical than normal, and blended in more with what the corps proper was wearing. The guard members’ trousers featured stripes the same lime green color of their cummerbunds, which were identical in form to the golden cummerbunds worn by the brass and percussion sections.

At times, the fanfare nature of “Toccata” from “Year of the Dragon” proclaimed an almost William Walton British sensibility, most reminiscent of some of the Walton works drum corps fans had previously heard on the field, such as “Belshazzar’s Feast” and “Symphony No. 1.” Despite some intense moments of slingshot drill evolutions and intensely loud brassy statements, the music was somewhat more ceremonially restrained than the regal British pomp of the Walton’s “Henry V” and “Crown Imperial.”

A volley of drumbeats led into a low brass horn statement that reminded some of the opening notes to the theme from “Jaws.” As if playing with this notion, the accompanying drill form very much looked like the fin of a shark. This moved into a 9/8 time signature dance section, featuring the guard members wearing blue-plumed shakos and humorously pantomiming the performance of spinning maces.

The segment of “Year of the Dragon” that Sparke had titled “Interlude” was originally a chorale featuring a melancholy solo for trombone. For 50 seconds, the horns stood still to express the pensiveness of the music, letting the guard members convey all the visual emotion. At the end of “Interlude,” a lone mellophone played the final notes of the original trombone solo.

The closer mixed “Finale” from “Year of the Dragon” with the overture that gave title to the show. The color guard spun soft multi-tone green flags complimentary to their cummerbunds. Sparke’s own liner notes comment, “’Finale’ is a real tour-de-force for the band with a stream of rapid (16th notes) running throughout the movement. The main theme is heroic and march-like, but this is interspersed with lighter, more playful episodes.”
...
A sudden burst of multi-hued gold flags at the advancing brass company front less than a minute from the end pushed the show into overdrive. The horns collapsed into a block that swirled within itself and then poured out into the corps’ trademark “Z-pull” maneuver that stretched the horn form out into one continuous line, half the musicians in a concave arc and the other half in a concave arc.

Did you see everything Boo described?

Now for 2002 Mandarins Drum and Bugle Corps + Intro by Steve Rondinaro.


I will feature the Mandarins again in this year's edition of A drum corps Super Tuesday. Stay tuned.

That's it for this year's drum corps celebration. I expect I will return to my usual observances next year, the Year of the Snake, including how Disney celebrates the holiday. Eleven years ago, they had Kaa as their character for Year of the Snake.
Anyone care to wager that Kaa repeats?

Enough of this year's festivities. It's time to conclude this post with the generic greetings I've recycled many times over.

Mandarin: Gong Xi Fa Cai/Xin Nian Kuai Le

Cantonese: Kung Hei Fat Choi

Hokkien (Fujian/Taiwanese): Kiong Hee Huat Tsai/Sin Ni khòai lok

Simplified Chinese: 恭喜发财 新年快乐

Traditional Chinese: 恭喜發財 新年快樂