Ahead Of First Home Game, New UW Band Director Talks About His Vision For The Program

After 50 years, the University of Wisconsin-Madison marching band will have a new director at its first home football game of the season Saturday.

Corey Pompey, an Alabama native coming to Wisconsin from the University of Nevada-Reno, will be leading the band through both new and old tunes, including Beyonce, the Killers and Adele for his first halftime show at Camp Randall.

Pompey recently spoke with Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Central Time” host Rob Ferrett about filling former director Mike Leckrone’s shoes and his vision for the program going forward.

The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Rob Ferrett: People like to get to know their band director here in Wisconsin, I think, tell us a little bit about yourself. What should people know about you?

Corey Pompey: Well I must admit I’m not the most interesting person in the world, but I’m from Birmingham, Alabama. I taught for a few years in the public schools and I had the great fortune of attending the University of Texas to get my doctorate. And then I started work at Penn State for a while, I worked at the University of Nevada-Reno. And now, I’m here and I absolutely love what I do.

RF: On the one hand people have talked about how maybe this is kind of intimidating taking over for this person who’s been in the job for so long, but in a way it seems like a great opportunity to decide, OK where do we stick with tradition, where do we start to introduce new elements. How do you balance those two things?

CP: Well, it’s not the easiest thing, I must admit. I can’t say I have a three-point plan, if you will, for how that goes. I just try to take the temperature of the room, or in this case the temperature of the field, and rely on my colleagues to say, ‘You know, what happens if we do it this way?’ And if I get the sense that maybe that’s something we wouldn’t want to do then perhaps we wouldn’t go in that direction.

But I am of the opinion, if it’s good, there’s no need to change it. And these changes that I’m talking about, I don’t honestly know if the average person would be able to notice these types of things. This is more, for lack of a better term, inside baseball type stuff that might not be apparent to someone that’s looking at the band or listening to the band from the 50-yard line.

RF: People see the finished product on the field. Can you talk about the work that goes into this for the students?

CP: It’s a tremendous amount of work. I have great admiration for the students that are in the band because they are extremely dedicated.

Most days we’ve been having what we call two-a-days, where we will have a session in the morning and we’ll have a session in the afternoon. We’ve had some three-a-days where we have a morning session and afternoon session and a night session, all in the service of making sure that we are prepared and ready to go.

Now that school has started we rehearse Tuesday through Friday from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. and on game days we rehearse several hours before the game.

RF: Did I see somewhere you hope people in the public come and watch some of the rehearsals?

CP: People are welcome to come and watch rehearsals at anytime.

RF: Will we get some of that insider baseball if we go and watch that?

CP: If you were to come to rehearsal you may see me raising my voice a little bit — hopefully out of love. But you will see us marching up and down the field. A lot of starts and stops, going back to correct things, you may hear us perfecting music. So it’s a lot of refining that’s taking place and in the beginning stages of a show, you will see us learning and trying to put the puzzle pieces together.

RF: I’m a little biased when it comes to stacking up university fight songs against each other. Wisconsin has a pretty good tune, is that one you’re gonna be happy working with day in and day out?

CP: It’s a delight. I find myself whistling it all the time, it never fully leaves me.

RF: If I was in your position the night before the first home game I don’t think I’d be able to sleep. How are you feeling going into this?

CP: Well, I dare not say that I feel settled. I feel anything but settled. I wouldn’t say that I’m nervous. Maybe I’ll be nervous once it’s time to do Badger Bash and once we march in that stadium. But believe it or not, there’s still a considerable amount of work that needs to be done between now and tomorrow … So I’m really focused on making sure that we complete all the tasks that need to be completed before we take the field.