Marching in Lucas Oil Stadium, a rush of adrenaline coursing through his body and a crowd of people in the stands watching him, senior drum major Ryan Mason stands proud at Drum Corps International Finals after completing the performance that would earn him a bronze medal.
Mason represented Cy Woods in Drum Corp International’s Santa Clara Vanguard show. DCI is a summer program where marching bands ages 16-22 of brass, percussion, and color guard go on tour and compete across the country. Over his two summers doing DCI, he had to put in relentless hours of work to put together their shows.
This year’s theme was titled the aVANt-GUARD. It pushed the limits of the artistry within the band and explored lots of different musical spaces by using innovative and bold music.
“DCI is this thing where I get to work really hard with a large group of people over the summer towards one goal,” Mason said.
Being part of a group of young musicians was really special to Mason over both seasons he has done SCV. Experiencing more than 100+ musicians all come together and creating a showcase of their talents is something not many people get to do.
Previously, Mason was doubtful he could make it as far as DCI in his musical career. DCI requires lots of dedication and precision to create a perfect show which meant that Mason had to strive for greatness in every rehearsal.
“The practices typically range from eight to 12 hour days of three or four hour blocks,” Mason said.”There was just a lot of intensive repping of the music and drill.”
The hours upon hours Mason spent to learn and perfect this piece of music was difficult and required great passion. His ability to power through the long and tiring rehearsals has proven Mason has unmatched resilience.
As well as the practices being demanding and relentless, the performances presented even more challenges. Mason had to perform the same way no matter who was in the stands watching.
“[Performances] in Utah had 10 or 100 people at a show, and then the next show, you got this big stadium and there’s thousands of people in the stands and you still have to give the same energy,” Mason said.
Despite any outside factors the world threw at Mason, he still had to give every performance his all. This proved to be difficult especially during the finals performance, which was one of the biggest moments of Mason’s musical career to date.
Mason was shocked when his band earned a spot in the top three “because the Blue Devils haven’t been out of a medal spot since 2007.” Causing another highly acclaimed band to break the 18-year streak of placing top three proved that all of the work he put in paid off. Mason could not be more proud that he played a part in this monumental feat for SVC.
Now that Mason is back from DCI he is ready to make the Cy Woods band better than ever as drum major. As he missed most of the Cy Woods summer band camp due to DCI, he was behind on the material. He has never been a drum major before so being behind and having to learn the show and conduct and lead the band at the same time was tough.
“It was a little strange, since it was different material I had to catch up on. It took me about a week and a half to really understand,” Mason said.
Mason plans to return to DCI in the future. His story with DCI is far from over, and his passion for marching band continues to grow.
“I plan on taking a gap year this year, because of college,” he said. “But after that, I plan on coming back.”
