The University of Texas at San Antonio has announced that it is forming a 150-piece marching band and color guard that will be ready to take the field with the school\'s new NCAA football team in September 2011.\"When that band comes out of the tunnel in two years, it is going to say a lot of things about a lot of people. It has to be great right out of the box.\"
Within a few years, Ellis would like to see the band grow to 350, putting it in a membership league with UT Austin\'s Longhorn Band and Texas A&M University\'s Fightin\' Texas Aggie Band.
Like a football team, a marching band is a complicated and expensive proposition. Private donations are needed to purchase uniforms, tubas, baritones and a drum line.
The band must also find a place to rehearse indoors and outdoors, build an observation tower for practice, find a storage facility for instruments and design distinctive blue-and-orange uniforms. They need a drum major, student leaders and a handbook of rules and regulations.
Donald Miller is a UTSA music professor who will be working with Ron Ellis to get the band ready. Says Donald:
\"If it is run really well, we can move mountains and change the entire campus culture. If it fails, it is going to make the entire university look bad. That is one reason we are bringing in Ron Ellis.\"
At UCF, Ellis worked his way up from student to drum major, drill designer and arranger, eventually becoming director of the marching band.
