The Genesis DBC Performers Council and Educational Staff are proud to present a new venture for our program, The 2022 Summer Performance and Clinic Tour. From June 24th – July 10th Genesis Drum and Bugle Corps will be embarking on a tour through Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas on our way to our first DCI show of the season, Drums Along the Rockies in Denver, CO.
Over the past 2 years, we have all seen changes in our activity and have been forced to review our process and experience. At the conclusion of the 2021 season, our administrative team sat down with a select group of Performers and Staff to discuss the positives and negatives of the changes and challenges our organization faced in 2020 and 2021. We challenged ourselves with the question “How can we do our part to aid in the transition from the pandemic?” Additionally, we discussed what changes we wanted to maintain and how we wanted to approach the member experience going forward. As part of that discussion, we reviewed our organization’s mission and defined what we all felt was “our purpose” in the wake of the pandemic. Out of these discussions was born the Performance and Clinic Tour.
The purpose of this tour is multifaceted with a focus on giving back to communities who have seen a major drop in fine arts enrollment and those communities who gave to our program during a season that was so unique in 2021. One of the goals of this tour is to reach as many students as possible to show how valuable marching band to students and to build excitement for the schools ahead of their summer band season, especially those middle school and younger high school students who have not seen marching band or performance at this level in 2 years.
Through this tour, Genesis will be offering several opportunities for the host schools as well as all the surrounding community band programs. Leadership and Drum Major training and interactive rehearsals will be available to all host schools and all the surrounding area programs will be invited to an evening performance and clinic hosted by the 2022 Genesis DBC performing ensemble. All of the available opportunities will be completely free of charge to anyone who wishes to attend.
More details will be released soon including dates and performance times. Information will be posted on our social media platforms as well as our website so stay tuned to how YOU can catch Genesis on this unique summer experience tour!
It is a story that is really not much different than yours. 2020 kicked off with incredible promise and excitement in November of 2019. We saw record turn out for auditions and our organization was set up for the most successful season in our brief 11 year history. By February we had our team in place, had developed strong alliances with some incredible new sponsors, added more quality educators to our staff and were set to embark on our most robust season of education to date. And, just like your story, COVID-19 brought all of this excitement to a halt.
Although our summer tour was cancelled we all knew that it would not stop Genesis from marching on! Over our 11 years we have faced many obstacles and challenges…we were prepared to face this pandemic.It would have been easy to close our doors and look to 2021, but our performers and staff told us a different story. We shifted focus and met almost daily in March to develop our plan. A collaborative idea started to come to life…and Project Genesis was born.
Project Genesis was developed as a collaborative “think tank” and combined ideas and input from our entire organization. We made investments in new technologies and options to serve our team during the shutdown. Among several projects we launched individual lessons for our members, commissioned new music from our creative staff for a Christmas album project and passed out 7 new pieces to our members, kept our staff in place and working, brought in clinicians for online masterclasses and brought our alumni together for a history documentary event. We also saw the need from our students for instruments at home to practice with.
Genesis made investments in new instruments and at home options to provide to our students who were in need. We provided all of the keyboard students and staff in need with Pearl MALLETStations to practice at home. We provided brass and percussion instruments to members not able to access these from their schools and made the investment in this without rental fees or impact to our students. We committed to our students only and did not open our options to the public and we did so in order to make sure that our 2020 team was given an experience unique to only them.
