Band Celebrates 65th Birthday With First Album in 15 Years

In celebration of its 65th anniversary, the Harvard Band plans to release next fall its first album since 1969.

The album will feature the sounds of the world's largest tuba and an original song written for the band last spring by satirical composer P.D.Q. Bach.

The album's songs are mostly "very Ivy League and very rah-rah," said Band Manager Paul B. O'Brien '86.

O'Brien added that the album will help to unite undergraduates and alumni. "This is the only way that Harvard fight songs and traditions get passed along," said O'Brien. "Undergraduates just don't know them."

For the first time since the band was founded in 1919, the popular tunes "Fight Fiercely Harvard"--written by Thomas A. Lehrer '47--and "Soldier's Field" will hit wax.

In addition, the record will feature a recent song--entitled "March of the Cute Little Woodsprites"--by Peter Schickele, who composes under the pseudonym P.D.Q. Bach. Schickele is "a longtime friend of the Harvard Band." Band Director Thomas G. Everett explained.

"It's been our tradition to do a record every 10 years or so," O'Brien said, and this latest version has reportedly been in the works for several years.

Too-bah

Since the band does not have its own tuba player, a local professional, Samuel Pilafian, will play the band's tuba, one of the five largest playable tubas in the world.

The 2000 albums will be distributed through the band, the Coop, and various Cambridge record stores. Band alumni will have a special chance to order by mail.

The Production Services Department of the Harvard Modern Language Center, which has recorded such Harvard musical groups as the Krokodiloes, will produce the Band album next month in Sanders Theater.

"We are trying to make it a homegrown effort," said Coordinator of Production Services Barry B. Mecquire, studio engineer for the project.