Schools

Plymouth-Canton Marching Band Takes Show on Road to New York City

The Plymouth-Canton Educational Park band is the first from Michigan invited to perform in Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.

Members of the Plymouth-Canton Marching Band piled into tour buses and headed to New York City on Monday night.

The band, comprising 175 students, will perform in Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade — and tour the city before returning home Saturday. The students, their teachers, the parent-chaperones and other family members — 341 people in all — will tour the Big Apple, see The Lion King on Broadway, maybe buy hot dogs from a street vendor and endure marathon bus rides as part of the round trip.

"One of the challenges is when we get off the bus at 6 a.m., we're having breakfast and starting our tours," said Peggy Fenwick, mother of percussionist Ryan Fenwick, trip chaperone and Canton Patch's band-mom blogger. "There's no check-in to our hotel, so we all had to bring our change of clothes for Tuesday with us."

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Many of the students simply wore flannel pajamas for the trip in the seven-bus caravan; teachers and parents dressed for comfort.

"I think it's going to be a little tiring. Hopefully, we sleep on the bus," she said. Asked how much sleep she thought the passengers would really get, Fenwick chuckled. Parents and other supporters riding in two buses would probably get some shut-eye, she allowed, but not the students riding in the remaining five buses.

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"I think they're too excited," she said.

Michael Wolf certainly wasn't thinking of sleep as he waited in the band room for instructions from band director David Armbruster — who managed the crowd of excited teens with calm precision, hushing the entire room almost instantly. Wolf, who plays baritone saxophone, said he cannot wait to see the Broadway production of The Lion King.

"It's my favorite movie," he said. "And I really want to see the hot dog street vendors. I've seen them on TV, but I've never seen one in person."

Family and friends staying behind can catch Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in a delayed broadcast at 4 p.m. on WDIV's digital channel, 4.2 (also called THIS TV), Comcast 294 or Wow's Channel 130.

Fenwick said brief notes about the band's New York City adventure for Canton Patch as well as share photos of the trip on Canton Patch's Facebook page.


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