2024 Mandarins – Vieux Carré

Mandarins have been on the rise for nearly a decade. In 2017, they knocked on the door, finishing 13th in a tight contest with the Madison Scouts. In 2018, they blew the door down, making Finals for the first time in their history. Last year, the Mandarins became the latest corps to join the Top 6 club, placing 6th with an incredibly entertaining Sinnerman show. The corps has built off that success this past season with a 7th place showing and another fan favorite in Vieux Carré.

While there have been New Orleans themed shows in the past, their focus has mainly been on the party atmosphere of events like Mardi Gras and the music that goes with it. With Vieux Carré, the Mandarins take to the streets of the city, with the corps literally pouring out of the clubs after delivering a powerful opening statement of In the Sweet By and By, a 19th century Gospel hymn which also found use as a New Orleans funeral dirge. It’s the Witching Hour in the city and, as the party makes its way through the city, we start to see supernatural figures and specters appear, shrouded in white or clad in masks and features. The corps itself is dressed for the occasion, wearing costumes of blue and purple and festooned with Mardi Gras style masks.

The second movement, Nicholas Britell’s Agape, was popular in drum corps this past season as both Mandarins and Bluecoats used it in their shows. Also like Bluecoats, the Mandarins combined Agape with another musical selection, in this case a more introspective arrangement of In the Sweet By and By which, in some ways, felt like an homage to the 2018 Bluecoats and their use of Saro in their show. The horns built into a fleur-de-lis formation at the climax of the movement, the symbol long associated with New Orleans.

The final movement of the show brought in the party atmosphere of the French Quarter, starting with a New Orleans parade style arrangement of In the Sweet By and By, performed by a New Orleans brass band small ensemble, complete with sousaphone. This led to a raucous arrangement of Trombone Shorty’s Lie To Me, featuring a powerful park and jam section by the corps and an amazing trombone soloist. The close of the movement also featured the horns pushing forward in a company front while “squads” of horns rotated in and out of the line before the formation compressed into a tight block to maximize the impact of the final chords.

As a final tag on the show, the corps returned to their “clubs” and to the In the Sweet By and By arrangement they opened with. As the clubs closed up and the sounds of the horns faded out, a lone trumpet soloist stood outside one of the clubs on the cobbled street, playing the final mournful strains of the song, as the spirits of the witching hour disappeared into the alleys of New Orleans, waiting until their time to return when night falls upon The Big Easy once again.