SARASOTA (SNN TV) – The Mighty Sailor Band ditches the drunken sailor stereotype with a high-brow kind of halftime show. When you listen to the Mighty Sailor Band’s halftime in 2022, they’re quite the classy group of sailors. They’re performing a “Sailor Symphony” as band director Chris Leiper told me, from Beethoven to Stravinsky.
But sometimes to get that delicate sound, you have to swim through some nasty currents. As drum major Adison Sherrard told me, “This band is really used to adversity here.”
Let’s put aside the obvious, with the band losing around half a dozen practices due to Hurricane Ian, and let’s go back a year. Adison and wind captain Steven Dean told me one of their props in their 2021 show was this big bridge, part of their halftime show, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water.’ At a competition at a different school, it was one of their first times using it because Sarasota High’s new turf made the bridge impossible to pull onto their own field.
Context: their marching shoes are smooth on the bottom.
