Join the Bands

Welcome to the Yale Bands. Whether you're an incoming freshman or a veteran Yalie, we're glad you're interested. The three ensembles comprise more than 130 individuals, they make more than 60 appearances per year, and are responsible for the entire Heckelphone population of Connecticut. There is a place for everyone in Yale's largest musical organization ... the Concert Band is for Yale's finest classical wind players, the Jazz Ensemble hosts a swinging jazz community, and the YPMB wants to assemble the most fun, spirited group (with room for musicians and nonmusicians alike) ever to set foot in New Haven. There is a lot of mixing between the ensembles; many people play in two or even all three. The Yale Bands and their members are very important in Yale's musical world in general. You can hardly find a group of musicians on campus - chamber orchestras, wood or brass quintets, pit orchestras, saxophone quartets, theory & composition seminars, music history classes, even rock bands and choruses - that isn't touched by the members of the Yale University Bands.

Want to get in on the action? 

We'll be holding our annual Yale Bands Informational Meeting on Monday, August 31, 2009, from 8:15 to 9:00 PM in the Yale Bands Room, Room 301 Hendrie Hall, 165 Elm St. You'll get a chance to meet current members and leaders from all three Yale Bands and hear what they have to say about us and what we do.  Until then, you can fill out the online information card, and Kate Kraft, the YPMB Drum Major, or David Katzman, Yale Bands President, will answer any questions you may have.

YALE CONCERT BAND

The Yale Concert Band, the musical center for the woodwind and brass world at Yale University, is best known for its varied repertoire, which spans from traditional marches, world premieres, and crowd favorites to the music of Glenn Miller and theatrical pieces (involving black lights, a fog machine, sunglasses and the biggest clarinet you've ever seen). Recent successes for the ensemble include two sold-out performances of our recreation of the Glenn Miller Band in Woolsey Hall, a tour of Brazil in 2007, and most recently a tour in Mexico in Spring 2009. In addition, the Yale University Concert Band hosted the CBDNA Eastern Division Conference in April 2000, featuring a weekend of symposiums and concerts.

Auditions for the 60-member Yale Concert Band will be held Tuesday, September 1 through Friday, September 4, 2009 in Room 301 Hendrie Hall (165 Elm St.). The audition consists of prepared excerpts which are available for download here, as well as as a prepared piece of music of your choosing which demonstrates your artistic and technical abilities (ie: an All-State audition piece or comparable etude); prepare the audition excerpts available from the Audition page; and be prepared to sight read.

The Yale Concert Band travels, too.  Recent tours have taken the YCB to Mexico, Brazil, Bermuda, Ireland, Spain, North Africa, Vienna, Salzburg, Prague, and St. Petersburg.  

YALE JAZZ ENSEMBLE

The Yale Jazz Ensemble is a standard big band that performs material ranging from swing charts selected from Yale's Benny Goodman archives to the newest and most progressive jazz compositions. The YJE hosted the Ivy League Jazz Festival for five consecutive years and has co-hosted and performed at the Yale Jazz Festival, warming up for such groups as the Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra, the Toshiko Akiyoshi/Lew Tabackin Big Band, the World Saxophone Quartet, Yale Band alumna Jane Ira Bloom and Branford Marsalis. The YJE has appeared twice at New York City's famous Village Vanguard (each time warming up the Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra), where it recorded its souvenir album The Yale Jazz Ensemble Live at the Village Vanguard. In 1993, the YJE packed London's famous Soho club Ronnie Scott's for an evening of American jazz. The YJE typically performs one concert each semester in Sprague Hall, as well as other gigs in Woolsey Hall on Parents' Weekend, the New York Yale Club, the residential colleges and GYPSCY, the graduate student bar on the Yale campus. In the past, the YJE has appeared at the Village Vanguard in New York City, Ronnie Scott's in London, the Ivy League Jazz festival and the Yale Jazz festival.

Auditions for the Yale Jazz Ensemble will be held Saturday, September 5, 2009 in Room 301 Hendrie Hall (165 Elm St.). The audition consists of several excerpts taken from the coming year's program (PDF excerpts will be posted here by August 3, 2009, for download), and the opportunity to improvise if you choose -- standard blues or your own play-along CD of whatever you choose.

YALE PRECISION MARCHING BAND

Imagine, if you will, this scene: a warm spring evening, midnight, in the middle of hahvahd Yard. The calm of the evening --- the night before finals -- is suddenly shattered by a group of rampaging musicians. To both smiles and water-balloon fire, at the foot of the John Harvard statue these bandies treat Cambridge to "Bulldog" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

The Yale Precision Marching Band, called "the Edsel of marching bands" by the New York Times, is nothing like your high school band. In fact, we're probably the polar opposite. Schooled in the ancient arts of feng schwee (the placement of buttons on one's band blazer to channel favorable forces) and shattering concrete with sheer musical volume, we are nothing if not a force to be reckoned with. The fall season finds us at the Yale Bowl most weekends, combining musical prowess with wildly entertaining halftime shows to cheer on our beloved Bulldogs. Come winter, the YPMB shows off its rocking tunes at Yale's hockey and basketball games. Occasionally we surface at stranger venues, from fencing to swimming, baseball and track and field. No gig is too small to be infused with that extra dose of Yale spirit. Athletic events are standard fare, but you never know where the YPMB might show up. Our travels have taken us to play for former First Lady Hillary Clinton on the steps of City Hall, to New York for the annual Greenwich Village Halloween parade (in full costume, natch), Giants Stadium, Chicago's Soldier Field, Madison Square Garden, the Olympic arena in Lake Placid, NY, and even to San Diego, CA. If you want to contribute and you have a pulse, you've passed muster - we have musicians of all degrees, student arrangers (how else do you think we got "Basket Case"), script writers, props wizards and more. We're looking forward to our part in a great season with the football team, the hockey team, and the many other wonders that go with being "A Member Of..." World domination can't be far away.

"Auditions" for the YPMB will be held Tuesday, September 1, 2009 in Room 302 Hendrie Hall (165 Elm St.)  Don't be nervous--we promise, it'll be the easiest audition you've ever experienced!