Bolstered by 75 years of tradition and nearly 100 instruments, UM’s new Band of the Hour director kicks off the “Famous First Rehearsal” one humid September afternoon in Coral Gables. When Tom Keck gives the signal, his students’ horns and drums blaze through “Hail to the Spirit” before an audience of UM’s top brass.

“I am a big fan of the band,” President Donna E. Shalala tells the small army of T-shirt-and-shorts-clad performers huddled around her on the intramural field, emphasizing that they are all critical to the University’s ambitious mission.

After their distinguished audience leaves, it’s class time. The sun and wind pound their own relentless rhythm into the afternoon as the fresh-faced Keck, who transferred from a director post at the University of Georgia in August, announces, “We’ve got work to do.” This is hardly news to his attentive charges. They’ve already sweated through the 12-hour-a-day drills of summer band camp and are well aware of the rest of the semester’s routine: rehearsal two hours a day, three times a week (and on some game days). Not only is their commitment voluntary, it costs them a credit’s worth of tuition plus variable uniform and instrument fees.

Kevin Mazzarella, a senior music education major and band captain in his fifth year with the group, tries to convey to an outsider why so many aspire to this level of dedication. “Our band maintains a rich tradition as the eye of the Hurricane spirit,” he notes.

So strong is Mario Cruz’s spirit that not even a heart attack could keep the 28-year-old tuba player off the field. Ten months after suffering a cardiac emergency he was back in uniform. “It’s such a great experience that you can’t help but go back,” says Cruz, who first auditioned in 1999 while attending Miami Dade College. A decade later, he’s close to breaking the record as its longest-standing member and is now majoring in English and secondary education at UM.

All it took to get Jenny Denk to sign up for the band four years ago was the prospect of marching on the vaunted Orange Bowl gridiron. “For a girl from Iowa, that was a really big deal,” recalls the senior music therapy major. Denk, a drum major, says it turned out to be the best decision of her college career. “I got to come in and meet 200 people just like me,” she says, though members represent a wide range of class levels and majors, and some even enroll from other institutions. “We are like a big family. Everyone is really friendly and welcoming.”

Frost School of Music Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Studies Kenneth Moses, B.M. ’72, M.M. ’74, a percussionist in the band from 1967 to 1971, agrees. He says the band has not only spawned innumerable lifelong friendships but also romances and marriages. “I’ve actually got students in the band now whose parents were students of mine,” he marvels. For Moses, there’s just no alternative: “I’m an old band geek. I still go to the games with the band. It’s in my blood.”

Of course, times have changed since the University’s band first got its marching orders in 1933 under the leadership of Walter E. Sheaffer, a clarinetist who once served as United States Marine Band concertmaster for famed composer John Philip Sousa. Its official name, the Band of the Hour, was bestowed in 1948 during a halftime show at the Orange Bowl when the announcer praised the band’s rendition of composer James Henry Fillmore Jr.’s “Man of the Hour” march by proclaiming, “‘The Man of the Hour’ played by the band of the hour!” That same year, Fred McCall began his record 23-year run as director of bands. “He was just an unbelievable person to work with and to work for,” recalls Moses, who served as UM’s assistant director of bands for 17 years before being named an assistant dean in 1991. “We were all his kids.”

During the 1950s, Fillmore donated funds to build the Henry Fillmore Band Hall. Back then, most band members were on scholarship at the music school; now music majors are in the minority. And though the nostalgic Orange Bowl era has given way to newfangled Dolphin Stadium, some things never change.

“The history associated with the Band of the Hour makes the tradition great,” explains Band of the Hour Association of Alumni and Friends vice president Joe Bagierek, B.M. ’03, M.B.A. ’07, a music business major who was a member of the drumline from 1999 to 2002 and band captain during his senior year. He cites Carmine Parente, B.S. ’89, past president Cindy Lasso, Henry and Sandra Barrow, Helen Tallman Braithwaite, M.S.Ed. ’77, and current president Bonnie Hinck-Baldatti, B.M. ’78, as a few of the band’s top supporters.

The band’s association, founded in 1993, consists of alumni, staff, friends, and family. It has around 15 core members presently and represents more than 1,000 band graduates, Bagierek estimates. An annual golf tournament raises funds to offset students’ band costs, and the association boasts Frost School endowments established by the late Dante Fascell, J.D. ’38, D.S.W. ’88, former director Michael Mann, and Parente. Thanks to support from President Shalala and Frost School Dean Shelton “Shelly” Berg, current members receive free books for their classes.

But what makes it all worthwhile, say band members past and present—despite rigorous rehearsals, brutal heat, unpredictable downpours, and endless bus trips—are those indelible game-day moments. For Bagierek, it was the 2002 Rose Bowl. “They call it the grand-daddy of them all, and it is,” says the Michigan native raised on a steady diet of Big Ten football. “I was pretty much out of my mind standing on the Rose in pregame,” he admits. “The adrenaline rush was unreal.”

Denk’s flash of euphoria struck while conducting a Stomp-style song that had half the band dancing and the other half pounding rhythm on garbage cans: “I just remember the crowd going wild. That was one of the coolest things. Everyone was cheering.”

Moses’s most transcendent moment occurred on another continent three decades ago, when he took the band to Japan for the Mirage Bowl. “It was 38 degrees and raining,” he recalls. “We assumed our concert was cancelled, but we were wrong. So we went on, and there were 40,000 people there in the rain to watch us.”

French horn player Hinck-Baldatti remembers the band’s strict nature and the era of the “carrot suit” uniform as well as the lighter side—like the time the percussion section “flavored” the Gatorade. But one date that stands out for her is September 24, 1977, when the band flew to Tallahassee on now-defunct Air Florida. “It was Bobby Bowden’s second year as head coach at Florida State University,” she recounts. “The Miami fans were outnumbered. We won the game. I still remember that we were worried about leaving the stadium ‘alive,’ kind of like 2007!”

Now a music teacher and band director in South Florida, Hinck-Baldatti is in her second year as Band of the Hour Association president. She gives back to the band by serving on the alumni board and volunteering on game days with her husband.

The Band of the Hour also inspired Emily Widrick, B.M. ’08, to become a band director. “When you can feel the entire stadium moving while playing a fight song or the national anthem, it’s a feeling you can’t get anywhere else,” she explains. “You become such a huge part of the spirit of the school. I will never forget the last game in the Orange Bowl, band camp, and just the times at practice where the people from the Band of the Hour became the people who know me better than anyone else.”

Even newcomer Keck, also the Frost School’s associate director of bands, already has a special on-field memory. In September, at one of his first games, he had the band play Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” right in the student section of the end zone. “The students started singing the song back to us,” he says. “So that was great—a little bit of a win.”

The Pennsylvania native, who started college as an accounting major and is now completing his doctorate in conducting, adds that his plans include growing the band significantly and continuing to update its sound—adding hip-hop and rap arrangements, for example—to engage more current and future ’Canes during football season.

Band veteran Cruz considers Keck a harmonious addition to his extended musical family: “Mr. Keck has a sense of humor, he’s very organized, and he can relate.” Cruz adds that Department of Instrumental Performance Chair and Director of Bands Gary Green, senior staff assistant Charles Damon (“the heart of the band”), and many others keep the band marching forward.

Keck agrees. “This band has always been headed in the right direction,” he says, noting, “I think we’re really in sync now.”