Patriotic Band Day in store

This year’s Kansas University Band Day will hit a patriotic note to commemorate the third anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Memorial Stadium is awash in a sea of high school band members for Band Day at Kansas University. The annual celebration will be Saturday, with a parade through downtown starting at 1:30 p.m.

The program for Saturday’s KU-Toledo halftime show includes a lineup of patriotic medleys. And Tom Stidham, associate director of bands for KU, said there was nothing more American than a downtown parade.

“I think with this parade, there’s a real draw just to watch bands march by,” Stidham said. “It’s a great piece of Americana.”

Thirty-seven bands are scheduled to march in the parade, which begins at 1:30 p.m. It will travel from Seventh and Massachusetts streets to South Park.

That’s two more bands than last year, but still a far cry from the years when more than 100 bands traveled to KU for the event. Stidham said he thought cutbacks in school travel budgets might have hurt KU’s Band Day, which is in its 57th year.

Kickoff for the football game is at 6 p.m. The bands will perform en masse on the Memorial Stadium field with the Marching Jayhawks.

The program for the halftime show includes four patriotic medleys, a medley of songs from the five military branches and “I’m a Jayhawk.”

Bands from Free State High School and Lawrence High School are scheduled to participate in Band Day.

“We don’t really do any extra preparation for the Band Day because we practice every day,” said LHS band director Mike Jones. “It is really cool, though, to see so many bands from Kansas on that day. But we really do it for the community.”