Marching Jayhawks: New director Sharon Toulouse takes the baton
Issue 3, 2024
Sharon Toulouse and Melissa Sawyer are both new in their jobs, but they are Marching Jayhawks veterans—so Toulouse, the band’s director, and Sawyer, her top assistant, knew what awaited them during summer preparations: perhaps the most distinct challenge in the vast global variety of live musical performances.
Who else but college marching band directors must prepare musical sets to entertain live audiences tens of thousands strong, every note to be played outdoors, in scorching sun and wind and rain and snow, across Labor Day-to-New Year’s temperature fluctuations of 100 degrees? To top it off, the players, mostly teenagers and non-music majors, must march with military precision through synchronized routes, customized to each individual performer, creating a tableau that, when seen from a distance, appears flawless.
“I’m doing that as we speak, writing drills for the first halftime,” Sawyer, DMA’23, assistant director of bands, says on a sizzling August afternoon. “Getting prepared is a full-time job in summer.”
Perhaps the only analogy to college marching bands is the old-timey tradition of marching and music festivals called “tattoos,” but the comparisons are not precise. The military musicians are highly trained adult professionals who drill year-round, and their thrilling tattoos are rare events that audiences come specifically to watch, rather than weekly pregame and halftime shows created in service to yet another entertainment spectacle: college football.
“It is … complicated,” says Toulouse, f’97, g’05. “I mean, if you think about it, there’s so much multitasking. Not only are you worrying about tone quality, intonation, rhythm and all the other stuff that’s involved just with the music, but now you’re making sure your feet are moving at the same time, and that you’re in line and you’re getting to your spot in the exact right place at the exact right time.
“If you overthink it, it’s very complicated. But, as musicians, we have that internal pulse. We have that steady beat.”
That steady beat is a point of pride for the Marching Jayhawks, a Mount Oread institution entering its 126th season that thrives on many goose-bumpy traditions—and this year halted one decidedly old-fashioned custom.
The charismatic Sharon Toulouse, for 12 years the Marching Jayhawks’ assistant director and energetic director of the men’s basketball pep band and the Midwestern Music Camp, 2016 honoree as a KU Woman of Distinction, U.S. Army veteran, in April became the first woman to hold the baton and lead one of the country’s most prestigious marching bands.
“She’s always upbeat, positive. She has a great sense of humor. She’s very friendly, and she’s a terrific ambassador for the School of Music and for the University of Kansas,” says Paul Popiel, the school’s dean. “Her colleagues in the School of Music respect her and respect what she’s done with the athletic bands, but she also forges great relationships with the Alumni Association, with Athletics, with University administration, and she makes such a positive impression with everyone she encounters.
“But that’s who she is. She’s a positive, happy, energetic, enthusiastic person who loves the work she’s doing, and that comes through very clearly every time you see her.”
What also comes through clearly is that Toulouse never would have sought such public praise. She is both happy and humble, and seemingly still grapples with how best to acknowledge her place in the history of gender equality at KU. No, that wasn’t the sound of the percussion line’s crash cymbals—it was the glorious song of another glass ceiling being shattered.
“I am completely honored and humbled that I was given this opportunity,” she says. “I do recognize the example that this sets for women and future educators, and, I have to say, I have been extremely blessed and fortunate that, here at KU, there’s never been that barrier. There’s never been that, ‘Oh, you’re just a woman.’ It’s solely based on your talent and your ability and your work ethic.
“So, I recognize what the example says, and I love sharing that with students, that there shouldn’t be a limit, that if you’re capable and skilled, then you’re going to get what you deserve. But the most important thing to me is that I want to do a good job. I want to make sure that this program continues and is successful.”
Sharon Ramsey Toulouse was a preschooler when her mother, Marcia, an elementary school music teacher for more than 30 years, first handed her a trumpet, during their Montessori school’s introduction to instruments.
“We all got to try all the instruments, and I was able to make a great sound on the trumpet. That was the spark,” Toulouse recalls. “I can remember standing there in this little music classroom and making that sound and going, ‘Ooooh, that’s good!’ From that moment on, I was like, I’m going to play the trumpet!”
Toulouse never lost touch with the thrill of making that trumpet sing. Growing up in a musical household, she became enamored of trumpet licks in famous works of music—Maurice Ravel’s virtuoso arrangement of the Russian piano suite “Pictures at an Exhibition” is an example she cites. After a series of moves for her parents’ work, Toulouse spent her teen years in Corpus Christi, Texas, where she attended Mary Carroll High School. Her goal of one day joining an orchestra wavered when Toulouse, who also ran track and played basketball, realized she wasn’t practicing enough to be the star in the most competitive ensembles. She stuck with marching band, however, and was first named to the Texas All-State Band as a junior.
Toulouse’s father, Dale, worked as a music engraver, drawing scores of original compositions for music publishers, and one of his clients at the time was Professor Emeritus Robert E. Foster, then in the midst of his 31-year run as KU’s director of bands. When the proud father mentioned his talented daughter, Foster, ever the charming and relentless recruiter, urged the family to consider KU. When she arrived for Midwestern Music Camp the summer after her high school graduation, Toulouse recognized her destiny.
“I was 16 hours from home, so it was an opportunity for me to reinvent myself and be who I wanted to be,” Toulouse says. “Our band back in Texas maybe had 150, and at KU we were about 250 at that time, which was huge. The stadium was ginormous, the whole game day experience, the activity in the stands, it was just so much fun. Some of my best friends who I still stay in touch with today are from that time, and I couldn’t tell you how many weddings I’ve been to of marching band kids. Building those friendships and connections and family, it’s security for a lot of freshmen coming in.”
After earning her music education degree, Toulouse worked as assistant band director at Free State High School, then in its second year as Lawrence’s second public high school, while also teaching beginners across the district. She savored the opportunity to help launch her young students on their musical adventures, yet Toulouse also discovered that playing her own music mattered more than she realized.
“I was a little bored,” she recalls. “I was missing, like, my heart.”
Heeding advice from school district colleagues who were members of the 312th Army Band at the Lawrence Army Reserve Training Center, Toulouse in 2002 “took the leap” and joined the Army Reserve.
“I was an athlete in high school and I was an active individual, and I was missing that as well,” she says. “I wanted something that’s going to physically challenge me and get me in shape, and I wanted to play my horn, and when I enlisted in the Army Reserves as a trumpet player, I loved it, I really did. It kicked my butt, got me into shape, and I got to play my horn. We had a really great band, we were playing great literature, so it challenged me musically and it challenged me physically, the two things I was really looking for.”
She returned to KU in 2003 to study for her master’s degree in conducting with John Lynch, then director of bands. Once her graduate degree was completed, Toulouse in 2005 upped her Army commitment to active duty and was stationed first at Fort Monroe, Virginia, followed by Fort Meade, Maryland, where she was a member of the prestigious United States Army Field Band, while her husband, Ted, f’02, played his trombone in The President’s Own United States Marine Band in Washington, D.C.
After giving birth to their son, Timothy, Toulouse in 2011 left active duty as a captain and joined the Washington, D.C., National Guard. One year later she learned of the retirement of Tom Stidham, KU’s assistant director of bands and longtime leader of the men’s basketball band. Toulouse applied, got the job and transferred to the Army Reserve in Lawrence, retiring last year as chief warrant officer 4.
Toulouse acknowledges that her “equivalent work experience” in the military is what qualified her for a lofty faculty position that typically would have gone to a candidate with a doctorate. Popiel cites her experience as an educator in Lawrence public schools, while emphasizing that the true value Toulouse’s military experience brings to the Marching Jayhawks is in logistics.
“We’re on buses and Ryder trucks everywhere we go, feeding 400 people in an efficient and organized way, providing water and gear and uniforms and instruments. It’s all logistics, all the time, and she had training of the highest order from the U.S. military in all those things,” Popiel says. “And there’s a sense of service and duty that she instills in the Marching Jayhawks leadership and in our students, building morale and a team. Our students feel part of a group that takes care of one another, that watches out for one another and feels loyalty.
“People ask us how we’ve grown the Marching Jayhawks over the last 10 or 15 years, despite some struggles in football, and the real secret to our success has been our retention numbers, even more than our recruiting numbers. As students buy into the team and the culture and social connection and the service to the University, they don’t want to give that up, so they’re staying for four years and more.”
The Marching Jayhawks last year included 362 student musicians and drum majors, continuing a run of three consecutive record-breaking rosters. The hot streak is expected to continue this season, when the band could approach, or perhaps even exceed, 400—viewed as something of a magic number.
Although registration was strong during the summer, nothing is certain until band members arrive on campus for “band camp.” The first few days under the mid-August sun focus on marching fundamentals—a task made infinitely more pleasant thanks to the gorgeous Riedel Family Field, a multipurpose turf field on West Campus that last year replaced the band’s sloped concrete slab atop the radio tower hill.
In a wrinkle unique to the Marching Jayhawks, student musicians during the course of the week will assemble not only by instrument, but also by major, giving incoming freshmen the rare opportunity to make connections with upperclassmen in their field of study. Music majors account for 40% to 45% of the band roster, with the rest coming from nearly every major and school, including engineering, nursing and law.
Thanks to proven brain-boosting benefits of playing an instrument and time-management skills required to balance three days of practice with 15 hours of coursework, administrators proudly boast that nearly all band members improve their academics—and social skills—by joining the Marching Jayhawks.
“Within the band, you immediately find your network of students who are like-minded and hardworking,” says assistant director Sawyer. “What’s also beautiful is that you’re meeting, you know, 400 people. You are going to meet your lifelong friends, and even before school starts you’re meeting people who will be in your classes.
“These skills we’re learning in marching band—the time management component, social skills, collaborating with others even in extreme weather conditions—you’re absolutely learning life skills that will carry with you into a career, but also in college.”
Popiel and Toulouse both praise Kansas Athletics for a long tradition of unwavering support for athletic bands, and they specifically cite the enthusiasm current athletics director Travis Goff, c’03, j’03, brings to the collaboration—including his offer for Athletics to finance the buses required to get the Marching Jayhawks to Kansas City for six “home” football games during the campus stadium’s reconstruction. Goff shares similar sentiments, and insists that the fan experience across all sports would be muted without student performers enlivening the proceedings.
“The noise they make, the game day impact, the home atmosphere, the value they add are all important,” Goff says, “and there’s a lot of other examples of that. You can talk about the Spirit Squad, with cheer and dance and mascots, and without all those groups, there’s no chance KU has the kind of energy and passion and momentum it has right now.”
The Marching Jayhawks in 1989 received the Sudler Trophy, an honor recognizing the country’s elite college programs that can be won only once in a band’s history. Beyond outsider recognition, the insiders insist their real joys are in traditions—the time-tested sequence of lively pregame songs and intricate marching routines is true blue—along with lifelong friendships and full academic experiences.
“You’re probably not doing it because you’re going to pad your résumé in order to become a professional marching band musician,” says trumpeter Curtis Marsh, j’92, KU Endowment’s development director for the School of Music and Lied Center. “You’re doing it for the love you find within yourself as a very sizable champion for traditions of the University. And I think it’s a little bit hard to do that, as an undergrad, in other ways.”
Sawyer grew up in Edmond, Oklahoma, within a family of band directors: “My dad, my uncle, my mother, three cousins and now me, we’re all band directors. I grew up in the band world, and in my entire life I really didn’t see women representation in the directing role. My dad actually prepared me: ‘It’s going to be tricky, but you can do it.’
“When I came to KU to get my doctorate, Sharon was one of the only female directors in the nation. I had never seen it before, and seeing her lead the marching band, even as an assistant at that time, I realized how important it was for representation, just to see for myself that I could eventually do what she was doing. It was huge. It made the dream feel like it could actually come true, and she’s probably the reason why I’m here today.”
Make beautiful music and overdue history: a new song worthy of the high-stepping tradition of KU’s Marching Jayhawks.
Look great, sound great, in perpetuity
Given that a Marching Jayhawks rehearsal opens the stirring video that launched KU Endowment’s Ever Onward capital campaign, and that the band’s sparkling razzle-dazzle energizes the call-to-action closer, it’s fitting that the School of Music’s most prominent troupe be included with a campaign ask of its own: an endowed fund, with a goal of $3 million, to repair and replace uniforms and instruments annually, rather than forcing school officials to issue desperate funding pleas every 10 years.
“This will be our 126th year,” Paul Popiel, dean of the School of Music, says of the Marching Jayhawks, “and we have not had a solution to replacing uniforms and instruments. With the Ever Onward campaign, we might be on the verge of having a solution for that.”
Marching Jayhawks alumnus Curtis Marsh, j’92, KU Endowment’s development director for the School of Music and Lied Center, notes that the fund’s “ambitious goals,” once reached, will mean that “we are never in a crisis situation with instruments and uniforms.” Marsh also notes that while record-setting student involvement swells pride in the band, there is no commensurate increase in funding for their crimson-and-blue kit.
The School of Music and the band’s performers are still enamored with the current uniform design (“Suit Up the Band,” issue No. 6, 2015), so it’s now feasible to lock the look in place and renew, repair and add uniforms as needed, rather than frantically fund 400 new uniforms, from feathered caps to spats, once every decade. The band also issues instruments to every member—and strongly discourages students from using their own—which means stocking and maintaining everything from dainty piccolos to massive sousaphones.
“Every 10 years or so, we realize, oh, man, we need new uniforms, or we realize these sousaphones are decades old and they are getting to the point where, even to the layperson, they’re noticing that it takes away from the image and the pageantry to have instruments that stand out in the wrong way,” Marsh says. “And, of course, the bigger the instrument, the more visually obvious the issues. Some of those sousaphones have silver bells; some of them have brass. That doesn’t mean one is a better sound than the other, but I’ve certainly heard from folks who say, ‘Hey, that looks a little funny. Why are you buying instruments that aren’t similar to one another?’”
To learn more about the Marching Jayhawks’ campaign fund, visit the School of Music’s Ever Onward page, or contact Marsh via email or at 785-832-7467.
Chris Lazzarino, j’86, is associate editor of Kansas Alumni magazine.
2024 Toulouse and Sawyer photos by Steve Puppe
2023 Toulouse and band photos by Jon Robichaud
/
