New Director Makes Plans To Strike Up The Band

By Michelle M. Falck

The prospect of an Old Dominion football team in the fall of 2009 is already stirring much excitement around campus, but for some, equally exciting is the news of a marching band. In preparation for this ODU musical tradition, a new member has joined the faculty.

Alex Treviño, who comes to Norfolk from the University of Washington in Seattle, joins ODU as the director of athletic bands and associate director of bands. While in Washington, he served as assistant director of the Husky Marching Band and Husky basketball bands from 2004-07.

Current students can audition for the ODU Marching Monarchs in the spring, and recruitment of prospective students will begin soon. He anticipates that scholarships will be available to all accepted members. Eventually the band will include a graduate assistant who will learn how to manage and direct a marching band.

The instrumentation will include: piccolo, clarinet, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, mellophone, trumpet, trombone, baritone, sousaphone, marching snare, marching bass drum, marching tenors and marching cymbals. There will be no pit percussion, as is found in competition bands, but plans call for a color guard and drum major.

Although game performances are still a ways off, the band will begin practices and participate in public performances, including parades and exhibitions, as of fall 2008.

Of great interest, Treviño says, will be the unveiling of the ODU Marching Monarchs’ “signature move.” While working as a graduate assistant for the University of Tennessee “Pride of the Southland” marching band, Treviño introduced the “Zipper-T” maneuver, now a highlight of the Volunteer football team’s pregame show. He currently is working on a number of creative ideas for the ODU band, but the final maneuver will depend upon the number of members. His goal is 240 members.

“You have to have something that the crowd looks forward to,” Treviño said. “That’s where traditions start.”