The University Record, March 19, 1996
Sedatore named Marching Band director; Grogan will assist
By Joanne Nesbit
News and Information Services
The high-stepping, horn-swinging Michigan Marching Band will take the field this fall under the direction of a new leader. Kev in Sedatole will assume the duties of director in July. Jeff Grogan, who has served the band as interim marching band director this past year, will become the assistant director. Both are familiar with the band’s history of tradition.
“There’s not another university band that consistently performs before as many people as the University of Michigan Marching Band,” Sedatole says. “And nobody has a fac ility like this one for a marching band. This is a state-of-the-art facility.”
Sedatole, a Texas native from the Houston area who met his wife while both were members of the Baylor Marching Band, intends to continue the Michigan tradition of excellence and brings with him conducting and teaching experience that ranges from s erving as the associate director of bands and principal conductor of the marching band at Stephen F. Austin State University to teaching marching band techniques and classes in conducting. He has appeared as guest conductor of bands, wind ensembles, symp honies and clinics throughout Texas as well as Kansas and England.
Sedatole and Grogan will begin their new assignments this summer planning and designing eight pregame and half-time shows. The charts and drill for each show require an average of two weeks of concentrated eight-hour days. Once the show has been sketched in, it must be designed and put into a computer. Drill charts and coordinate sheets are then printed for the entire band.
“We’re designing these drills jointly,” Grogan said. “But some of the best shows are designed from midnight to 4 a.m. I just wake up and write them down.”
Add to this summer schedule auditions for incoming students, recruiting and visiting Michigan schools during May, budget preparation, season procurements, meetings with the staff, the athletic department and alumni, fundraising, and planning and scheduling for all away trips, concerts and exhibition performances. You have two fellows who are on the move all the time.
So how do you keep this momentum upthis constant striving to do bigger and better? “The students like to be challenged and pushed,” Sedatole said. “They want to perform as perfectly as they can. They have a high level of self-mot ivation. And they think. The director has to be sensitive to where the band is and when and how many times the right button can be pushed.”
