Listen to the past with the 33rd Regiment Band on the Quad

As part of the annual Concerts on the Quad series hosted by the School of Music, the historical reenactment band will perform on Monday, July 27. The series kicks off July 6 with singer-songwriter and mandolinist Ashley Lewis, indie alt-pop group emily the band plays on July 13, and Straight Answer Jazz Trio will play smooth riffs on July 20.

All concerts begin at 7 p.m., are free and open to the public, and take place on the east side of Cook Hall (the Castle) on the Quad. Concertgoers are encouraged to bring lawn chairs or blankets for seating.

The 33rd Illinois Volunteer Regiment Band performance aligns with the 30th anniversary of the band’s modern formation in 1996.

Founding band member and E-flat bass horn player Chris Adelman ’79, who studied industrial technology at Illinois State, remembers the band’s origins well—at least in the 20th century.

“It all started with the David Davis Mansion (in Bloomington),” Adelman said. “They were looking to have a recreation of the Lincoln-Douglas debates on the grounds of the mansion, so they came to a community concert band lunch, and they asked if we had any people who would be interested in forming a small group to play some songs of the period.”

The volunteers dusted off the older and more obscure horns from their collections, sourced some Civil War reenactment uniforms, learned a few period pieces, and they had a blast.

“We had so much fun doing that, that we said, ‘You know, there are all these reenactment bands around the country, but there’s not one in Illinois.’ So we thought we’d like to try that out,” Adelman said.

“A wonderful blessing of this group is being able to put yourself in [Civil War veterans’] shoes.”

—Chris Adelman ’79

The Civil War-era history of Illinois State University provided the perfect legacy for the newly formed group to honor. The original 33rd Illinois Volunteer Regiment Band was formed along with the 33rd regiment itself in April 1861, only four years after the University was founded with Abraham Lincoln representing the founding board as legal counsel. It was President Lincoln who approved University President Charles Hovey’s request to lead the “Teachers’ Regiment,” made of volunteers from the University. The regiment is known to have fought at the Siege of Vicksburg, where they lost 11 of 32 members and all but one were wounded.

“A wonderful blessing of this group is being able to put yourself in their shoes,” Adelman said, referring to the soldiers who fought in the Civil War.

The members see themselves as a true continuation of the original 33rd Regiment Band, using words like “us” and “our” when referring to the band as it was in 1861. And they have earned the right, having become a historical institution in the Midwest.

“We’ve been invited to play all over Illinois, Indiana, and at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, so it’s been a tour de force of historical festivals and events that we’ve played for,” Adelman said.

This has been a special year for historical celebrations, being the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And, even though the uniforms of the American Revolution and the Civil War do not share a sense of fashion, 1776 and 1861 are not as far removed from each other as fourscore-and-then-some years would suggest, as far as wartime music goes.

“‘Yankee Doodle’ was a very popular Revolutionary War tune that made a comeback in the Civil War,” said John Bergmann ’97, a local high school physics teacher who plays E-flat cornet with the 33rd Regiment Band and is the band’s narrator, responsible for introducing songs with a bit of history and storytelling. The band has not finalized the Concerts on the Quad setlist, but Bergmann said the Revolutionary War classic would certainly be performed.

“We would call these ‘camp songs’ or ‘parlor songs.’ Songs that people were familiar with from home,” Bergmann said. While all-brass bands were a particular fad of the 19th century, according to Bergmann, many songs stood the test of time as they were passed down across generations.

In other words, the 33rd Regiment Band plays the pop music of the 19th century: easy to listen to, easy to learn.

“And it’s fun to play,” said Maggie Mills ’89, a B-flat cornet player with a master’s degree in music from Illinois State.

Despite there being more than 400 women who disguised themselves as men to enlist in the military during the Civil War, including the famous example of Jennie Hodgers/Albert Cashier in Illinois, the original 33rd Regiment Band was not known to include any women. The modern iteration of the band has seven volunteering in both performance and support roles. As a horn player, Mills wears an authentic Union military uniform along with her fellow band members.

“The uniform was uncomfortable at first, but I’ve gotten used to it,” Mills said.

“I can’t imagine pretending to be a man in the military,” Mills continued. “Thankfully they all know I’m a woman, and I can just be there.”