BREAKING: Santa Clara Vanguard to Cease Operations for 2023 Season
Vanguard Music and Performing Arts have announced that the Santa Clara Vanguard will cease operations for the 2023 season. This comes just months after VMAPA announced in September that the Vanguard Cadets would be going on hiatus. Details on whether they will return in 2024 have yet to be made clear, but they have officially pulled out of all DCI events for the upcoming season.
Santa Clara Vanguard was a founding member of Drum Corps International and boasted 7 DCI World Champion titles, the third most behind the Blue Devils (20) and The Cadets (10). The most recent of these was just four years ago in 2018 with “Babylon,” which won every caption award except for Color Guard (which they won in 2017). They have placed in the top half of finals every year since 2011 and have never finished any lower than 8th in 50 years of DCI competition. They are the only corps to have made DCI finals every single season it has been held.
The corps, along with founding director Gail Royer, were one of the driving forces behind the Midwest Combine. The Combine was one of the two organizations of corps, along with the Alliance, that joined together to form DCI in October of 1971. Throughout DCI’s history, Santa Clara Vanguard has consistently been at the forefront of innovation in addition to its competitive success. Additionally, they are the first corps not to compete the year following a top division finals appearance since Star of Indiana broke away from DCI to start Brass Theater following the 1993 season.