Hey Alumni!
Hi! My name is Ella, but most people in the band call me Tumble. I’m a junior trumpet majoring in computer science and pursuing a minor in data science. Previously, I was a Webmaster on bandstaph in 2025. I’m really looking forward to meeting a lot of you this year!
Hi! My name is Astrid, but everyone calls me AJ. I’m a junior sax from Charlotte, North Carolina double majoring in Government and American Studies with minors in Africana Studies and Theater. I served as a Fundraising Chair and DEI Chair on the 2024 bandstaph. If you’re in the Class of ‘85, you may remember me as one of your 40th Reunion Clerks! I’m so excited to meet y’all in the 2026 season!
We are both thrilled to be your 2026 Alumni Relations chairs! We’ll make announcements about Giving Day, Reunion, and other spring events here soon. Please reach out to us at ems474@cornell.edu and acj68@cornell.edu with any questions you may have.
Peace and endless snow,
Ella “Tumble” Schneyer ‘27
Astrid “AJ” James ‘27
And now…presenting the only REAL Band Notes in the Ivy League!
Notes from the Office: Introducing Your 2026 Head Manager!
Notes from the Ladder: Introducing Your 2026 Drum Major!
Notes from Lynah: Introducing Your 2026 Pep Band Manager!
Introducing Your 2026 Pep Conductors!
Introducing Your 2026 CUID President!
The Magic: A Senior Perspective
Hey Olds!
As I prepare to join you in the mysterious beyond of post-graduate life, I am honored to have been asked to write this note to keep you updated on my little corner of the Big Red Bands. My name is Wins—“Jacob,” if you insist—and I’ve played trumpet here for four years. Although I knew I wanted to play in the Pep Band from the get-go, it took me a few years to properly join Marching. I only wish they had zipped me into that uniform and shoved me on the field earlier! I’m happy to report that the irreplaceable Band community is still going strong. As I write this, I am surrounded by some of my favorite people in this world, all of whom I met through Band. Even as we near graduation, I know they will remain in my life—and that makes the memories we share even more special. As I wrote in my journal after my first First Night, “I think these are my people.”
Being a senior so close to graduation is… a lot. I’ve been thinking about the future near-constantly. I don’t know what will come of my grad school applications* or professional aspirations—but I do know who’s in my corner. I know who will be there to celebrate or mourn—who will always be there for me. You know, I somehow didn’t cry at Non-Sec this year. I am now.
To quote the speech I gave then: “We’re moving on, but part of the beauty of this thing is that it will outlive all of us. We’re a part of its history now. And not only will the connection remain through Homecoming, and calls to olds on First Night, and friendships that continue; and not only through the memories we’ve made; but especially, for me, through the knowledge that the Band lives on—that hundreds of kids like us will continue to have adventures, and meet new friends, and play the songs we all played, and cry at Non-Sec as they tell everyone in this room how important they are, and how much they love them all.”
I can only hope that your experience in Band was as impactful as mine. And even more strongly, I hope that current and future Bandies feel the same magic I did—and do—and that they build up that magic, forge those connections, and keep the Band special, safe, and sacred. I have a lot of trust in our new leadership, and am especially excited to watch our underclassmen grow into the next generation of leaders. Rest assured, the Band is in a good place.
Yours,
Wins Weinstein ‘26
*Two days after writing this, I learned I had been accepted to a PhD program at Penn (say the line…) and will be attending in the fall!
Hey Everyone!
We’re Daniel and Jonathan, and we are your Pep Conductors for the Spring 2026 semester!
So far we have gone on two trips this semester: Brown/Yale and RPI/Union. Looking ahead, we will be traveling to Princeton/Quinnipiac for the first time in a while, and then we will once again celebrate the end of the season at fancy Mhockey! Both Mhockey and Whockey have claimed the Ivy League Title this year, and we look forward to cheering them on throughout the rest of the season!
This semester we have also gotten to attend several basketball games and wrestling matches. With Ivy Madness in Ithaca this year, Cornell is still in the hunt for a spot, and we will continue to cheer them on! We are also excited to support our lacrosse teams later this semester, especially as the men’s team defends their title as NCAA champions!
In music news, we continue to work on expanding the folder with fun songs! We are currently running a cheersheet competition, and are looking forward to seeing what arrangements people come up with!
Daniel “do I have strep or am I just shouting in ice rinks?” Fransen ’27
Jonathan “clean your water bottle” Miller ’26
Hi! My name is Kamili Fernandez and I am the President of the Indoor Drumline at Cornell University (CUID). I am a junior majorin
g in Animal Science, originally from Miami, Florida, and I play tenor. I am also Drum Captain in Marching Band and involved in Pep Band, so band has really shaped my Cornell experience. CUID in particular has given me some of my favorite memories and closest friendships, and I am so excited to help lead the group this season.
For those who may not know much about us, CUID is a student-run competitive percussion ensemble that performs a marching floor show featuring both a front ensemble and a battery in the New York State Percussion Circuit, with competitions taking place over the spring semester. Our season is short and intense, which makes it special.
This year’s show is titled The Crow. The crows are a militant force oppressing the swans, until a swan and a crow fall in love and lead a revolution. The music moves between haunting and whimsical, with birdsong layered throughout the production. We are using an arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake to help tell the story visually and musically. One element we are especially excited about this year is the addition of guard actors portraying the swan and the crow, which brings the storyline to life in a whole new way. It is theatrical, intense, and one of the most creative shows we have taken on.
My biggest goals this year are consistency and culture. I want every member to feel confident in their role and proud of what we are building together. Competitive success is always exciting, but what matters most to me is creating an environment where people feel motivated, supported, and excited to perform. We have a hardworking and talented group this season, and we can’t wait to perform this spring.
If you are interested in learning more about CUID or would just like to see what we do, check us out on Instagram at @cuindoordrumline or email us at cuindoordrumline@gmail.com
Come see our show:
Competition 1: Sat 3/7, Paul V Moore High School, Central Square, NY 13036
Competition 2: Sat 3/14, ESM High School, 6400 Fremont Road, East Syracuse NY 13057
Showcase: Sat 3/21, Indoor Drumline Showcase, Barton Hall
Championships: Sun 3/29, Gates Chili High School, 1 Spartan Way, Rochester, NY 14624
Thank you for continuing to support CUID! We are excited to share The Crow with you this spring and hope to see you at a show!
Kamili Fernandez ’27
Note from Alumni Relations Chairs: CUID is a separate organization from the Big Red Bands. As there is substantial overlap between CUID and the marching band, we thought it’d be nice to share what these band members are doing in the spring semester.
Hey Alumni!!
My name is Brian “Dawgs” Gu, and I’m your 2026 Pep Band Manager! I am a Trumpet, Horn, and Clarinet from Hopkinton, MA (the start of the Boston Marathon) studying Finance and Food Industry Management in the Dyson School! Previously, I was the Marching Band’s Treasurer in 2025, and the Fundraising and Philanthropy Chair in 2024. Outside of band, I am heavily involved on campus through professional societies, client-based business clubs, Outdoor Odyssey, greek life, and my very own DJ collective. Above all, I have found my favorite and fondest memories in Pep Band, and I hope I can give back to this organization to the fullest this year!
We have been off to a great start this first month and a half of pep! We’ve had around 24 events so far from rehearsals, away trips, home Men’s Hockey, Women’s Hockey, Women’s Club Hockey, Women’s Basketball, wrestling meets, and much more! Every event has been filled to the brim with bandies, and a lot of new members were able to have many different firsts (pep away trips and Harvard rivalries).
A highlight of the 2026 year so far was our trip to Brown & Yale! After hotel and ticket negotiations and accommodations, we were able to bring over 50 band members to New Haven and Providence. Blasting songs like Impression, Dr. Worm, and Birdland as the largest band in away team territory was a great time. We even got a big shoutout from Head Coach Casey Jones and the players for the big red spirit! At the same time, we even had over 20 members at home to support the Women’s Hockey team.
Now as we enter the final stretch of the regular season and a potential playoff run we have a packed schedule! The band will travel to Princeton/Quinnipiac for the first time in 4 years before returning back to a packed Lynah for the senior and fancy weekend against SLU and Clarkson. Also if the Women’s Hockey team does well, they’ll be playing the ECAC Women’s Hockey championship in Lake Placid! For basketball, Ivy madness will be hosted in Ithaca this year, so no need to travel. Further out, we have lacrosse getting back in session and after a championship high last season, we are looking forward to the various renditions of Davy to come.
I am so excited for what Pep Band can do this year whether that be with new trips, games, or on-campus events. I’m looking forward to strengthening the band’s special culture and traditions, and growing our community and adventures in 2026. Stay tuned, stop by when you are in the area, and please reach out!
Let’s Go Red!
Brian “Dawgs” Gu ‘27
Hey Alumni! 
My name is Allison Weiher, and I’m a Junior from Wisconsin majoring in Plant Sciences, with minors in Climate Change and Data Science. Outside of band, I’m involved in the Cornell Environmental Collaborative and Hortus Forum, and I also do research in the Moore Lab with breeding for sustainable cropping systems. I’m a proud member of the horn section (though I’ve managed to play a game in Lynah with every section!), and I was Horn Section Leader in 2025 (and part of 2024)! Now, I am beyond honored to be your 2026 Drum Major, not to mention the first horn DM in what I believe to be 50 years!
I am so lucky to be inheriting the band in such good shape and am so grateful for all that Josh accomplished last year. We have an amazing crew of freshmen that have found their home in the band, and I’m fortunate enough to get to work directly with some of them as Show Committee members and Section Leaders! One of my goals for the year is to help foster a stronger support system amongst SLs to give us all a solid footing when we head into the chaos of the fall. We just had an SL bonding dinner, and I loved seeing everyone get to know each other better, so I hope to continue finding new ways to connect more!
While the BRMB is still in the off-season, we’ve been busy behind the scenes. We’re currently in the process of selecting songs to march next fall, and ShowComm has done such an amazing job at finding so many fun arrangements for us to choose from! And with music rehearsals starting back up again soon, I am excited to work on reviving folder songs that we haven’t played in a while, while also incorporating a couple of the band’s favorites that we marched in recent years.
I can’t wait to get the full band back together for Giving Day in just a few weeks, with everyone back in uniform and blasting my face off – hopefully with a bit more normal livestream experience than last year, thanks to our amazing Licensing Committee’s hard work! Looking forward, we have classic performances like Dragon Day (OI OI OI!), Server Derby, and, of course, Spring Concert. I’m particularly looking forward to our Cornell Days performances where we’ll get our first chance to meet the next generation of future bandies in the class of 2030! Before I know it, it’ll be the fall, and they’ll all be here standing amongst us at First Night, experiencing the joy and wonder of this organization. I aspire to make the BRMB as friendly and welcoming of a community as it was for me when I was just a shy, quiet freshman. From bringing back HM/DM Open Office time (perhaps with fun activities before rehearsals) to crashing section dinners, I’m so excited to welcome in an amazing class of new members! Let’s Go Red!
Allison Weiher ‘27
Hey Alumni!!
My name is Abigail “Heck” Heck and I am super excited to be the 2026 Head Manager of the BRMB! I am from Aquebogue, NY (a small town on the northfork of Long Island) and am a Junior in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, majoring in Biology on the pre-med track and minoring in Business and Infectious Diseases. Within the BRMB, I have had the pleasure of serving as one of the 2025 Clarinet Section Leaders as well as the 2024 Secretary. Outside of band, I am a student advisor for my major and am involved in several biology and health education/advocacy organizations on campus.
This year, one of my main goals is to increase the band’s ability to share our work beyond the football field. In response to the recent university audit, I appointed a special committee focused on music licensing so that we can once again record and post performances in a way that is sustainable and compliant. Being able to share our music is an important part of our identity, and I am excited to take concrete steps toward restoring that visibility for the band so we can show everyone just how awesome we are!
I am also working to further integrate our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee into the core of our band culture. This includes intentionally setting aside time during rehearsals for DEI-related announcements and updates, ensuring that these efforts are consistent, visible, and valued by the entire organization.
I hope to streamline how we teach and support members who join the band without prior instrument experience by creating clearer processes and stronger support systems, so that every member feels confident, welcomed, and empowered to grow. In addition, our Philanthropy Coordinators have been working hard to connect us to more events across Cornell and the greater Ithaca Community. We are partnering with the Tompkins County Public Library and the Cornell Child Care Center to show local students what marching band is all about!
I am incredibly excited to work alongside our Bandstaph, section leaders, and members as we continue to build a band that is inclusive, adaptable, and proud of both its people and its music. Looking ahead to the fall, we will be traveling with the football team to Georgetown (for the first time since 2011), Princeton, and Columbia! There is already buzz around the Sy Katz Parade, and we are all absolutely thrilled for this special experience. I’m looking forward to another great season and hope to see many of you at our performances and events throughout the year. Go Red 
Abigail “Heck” Heck ’27
Hey Alumni!
The 2025 BRMB season has officially come to an end, and as we look back on all of the experiences we’ve had together it can’t help but feel bittersweet. This season we performed at not 6, not 7, but 8 football games, including trips to Yale, Harvard, and Penn (where we educated our peers on what it means to be a Real Marching Band). On November 22nd, we held our annual Senior Concert to bid farewell to the Class of 2026. We loved getting to see so many of you throughout this season at Reunion, Homecoming, or any of the away games!
As your Alumni Relations Chairs, we aimed to keep you all in the loop and to welcome each and every alumnus that visited the band. Thank you to everyone who joined us, cheered us, and played with us this year! Four years goes by pretty quickly, but your continued energy, enthusiasm, and enduring friendships remind us that the BRMB will be a part of our lives forever. We genuinely could not ask for a better group of fans and supporters. This year had some amazing experiences on football fields, parades, bus rides, or just during practice. In those moments, we built relationships that last lifetimes, and it is your support that has made these experiences possible.
A few short years from now, sooner than we realize, we will join you all in the great Post-Band beyond, and when we do, we hope that we will treat the Alumni Relations Chairs of the future BRMB with as much joy and support as you have treated us this year. Our sincere thanks: we are in your debt.
Lastly, we want to extend many thanks to our Head Manager Emily Mawhinney who has provided us with guidance and support throughout this past year, to our fearless Drum Major Josh Faber, and to all the fine musicians of the Big Red Bands.
It has been a wonderful experience serving as your 2025 ARCs and as we share these Band Notes with you, we are passing the torch to those who will hold this position in 2026.
Peace and apparently football can go into overtime,
Abbott “Pidge” Sherlock ’27
Max “That Guy” Troiano ’28
And now… presenting the only REAL Band Notes in the Ivy League!
A Manager’s Memories: Looking back on the 2025 Season
Carrying the Mace: Notes from the DM
Auld Lang Syne: Notes from the PBM
From the Blue Line: Reflecting on the 2025 Season
Show Much Fun: Notes from ShowComm
Section Shenanigans
Welcome to the Family: A Freshman Perspective
Hey Alumni! 
My name is Emily Mawhinney and I was your 2025 Head Manager. I am a senior majoring in Environment and Sustainability and minoring in Entomology
The Big Red Marching Band has had such a fun year and I am so excited to share with you everything that we have been up to!
During the off season we played at some fun events such as Dragon Day and the Hotel Schools Server Derby. We held our own Spring Concert in the Commons, where we had just an absolute blast. And over the summer we played at reunion events and saw many of you at our Band Luncheon!
We started off the school year with several recruitment events like New Student Orientation and Auditions/Open house. We then held our first night, where new members got to learn our traditions and meet the sections. In the coming weeks we started learning our drill at rehearsal and band camp. We also worked on Cornell Victorious with the football team after one of their practices!
Then, we hit the ground running with our trip to Yale, where we got to see a lot of alumni and marched for our first audience of the season. We then had the pleasure to welcome you all back to the Hill with Homecoming. Shout out to our alumni chairs for hosting such a great luncheon and it was so much fun to play with everyone again! On our away trip to Harvard we got to play a Friday Night Lights game and met the wonderful Harvard band. The next day we performed a concert at Faneuil Hall (my favorite memory of the season)! Thank you to everyone who came out to watch us perform. The next few home games were great, with a four game winning streak and a visit from the ever friendly Princeton band. We then visited the University of Pennsylvania for our final away trip, with an exciting surprise that we would be able to play both a pre game and a halftime show! Last but not least we wrapped up our season with a home game against Columbia! We were able to continue the tradition of performing in the libraries with a very exciting concert in the cocktail lounge. We also bid our seniors farewell with the senior concert. It was really meaningful to me as a senior to watch all of my friends, who I went through the BRMB with, conduct a song to close out the season.
I am extremely grateful to have had the pleasure of leading this band over the past year. I have grown a lot as both a leader and person, and I will always be grateful for this opportunity. It was also very rewarding to watch all of the sophomores and juniors grow into being leaders within the band, and I am very excited to see the direction in which they take this group.
I want to send a shout out to my wonderful Drum Major Josh – Thank you for leading with me through the craziness of this role. From football games to band center gas leaks, we’ve been through a lot, and I am very happy to have done it alongside you.
Also a huge thank you to my wonderful Bandstaph. Nothing we do is possible without you, and I am very grateful for the work each and every one of you put in!
Thank you band!
Emily Mawhinney
Hey Alumni!
I am beyond proud to be writing to you all as the season comes to a close to report that the band is doing great. We had an incredible year, welcoming a large, enthusiastic class of new marchers while the upperclassmen continued to keep up the hype and excitement. We’re having so much fun on and off the field, preserving old traditions and making new ones, and strengthening the sense of community that makes the BRMB so special.
The band put on 8 fantastic performances of 4 amazing shows this year, including some more challenging music and drill that really pushed the band to grow. If you’d like to read more about those shows, I encourage you to check out the Band Note written by our Show Committee! We sounded and looked great on the field and received a number of compliments at all our games, including from fans of the opposing team!
This season, the band joined the team on trips to Yale, Harvard, and Penn. We were proud to have full buses for all of those trips, which is a reflection of the band’s commitment and dedication, as well as a testament to our great recruitment and retention over the past few years. At every game, we kept spirits high and brought the Big Red energy to all of Schoellkopf (or opposing stadiums) and the greater Cornell community. The football team had a great season too, including its first four-game win streak since 1999. Cornell Victorious has never sounded so good!
Playing at Quincy Market was an especially meaningful moment for me and for the band. The day after a Friday night Harvard game, we were able to continue our tradition of performing a concert at the historic site before heading back to Ithaca. Conducting in front of the landmark steps and drawing in a huge crowd of passers-by was surreal to me. It was also very exciting to see all of the amazing alumni from the Boston area and beyond who came to join us. Hearing you all join in as we played your favorite songs and watching you dance along with us made me so happy and brought a huge smile to my face.
As my term comes to an end, I’m incredibly grateful to all of the people who help make the band so special. To Emily, the section leaders, the show committee, bandstaph, and the band at large, thank you all for all of your hard work, for your energy and enthusiasm, and for playing every note with the spirit of the BRMB. And, of course, a huge thank you goes out to all of you, the alumni. Your constant support makes all of this possible and helps ensure more generations of music and memories.
Being Drum Major has been a great honor and I’m so lucky to have all of these amazing experiences and memories from the past four years that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. I am so proud of the band and I have so much faith that they will continue to do amazing things in years to come. I can’t wait to see you all at Homecoming next year!
GO RED DAMMIT!!!
~ Josh Faber ’26
Hey Alumni!
Time flies when you’re having fun. So unsurprisingly this year went by in a flash. It feels like it was just yesterday we were at Toledo, screaming our heads off as our team finished off Michigan State. Or in Lake Placid, watching our team defeat two teams we thought would be the end of us. Or in Foxborough, watching the first Cornell NCAA champs crown themselves in Gillette Stadium. Or at First Night, watching all the freshmen find their way into the band center and diving head first into both marching and pep. Or even at MSG, performing our pregame and enduring a depressed bus ride home.
It’s been a hell of a year and I’m incredibly grateful to have served as Pep Band Manager throughout it. There were ups and downs, things I wish I did better and things I think the band did spectacularly well despite serious challenges. Like I said, we managed to make it all over the northeast and beyond, even being able to watch Cornell’s first NCAA championship in fifty years, with a band of alumni and students celebrating in Gillette stadium. We had one of the busiest playoff seasons in a while and we managed to get to nearly everything, and for that I have to be grateful to athletics and BRBAA, who helped organize the funding and last minute organization of such crazy endeavors, along with all the alumni who joined us on the road.
The fall is always a little more relaxed for Pep, but we still managed to get involved. The Pep Board has been hard at work, and this year the social chairs organized a social with the Women’s Hockey team, only for us to turn around and support them by traveling to Colgate. We also managed to attend a variety of spirit events, and even had a small playoff run with Men’s Soccer. We capped it off with MSG, where 75 band members traveled to New York to perform at Red Hot Hockey. Despite our tragic loss, I was still happy to see how many people attended and how strong the band looked.
As my term comes to a close I get to watch the band rally for the spring as hockey season begins to swing into high gear. I feel honored to see how passionate the band has become, to the extent that a “skeleton band” feels like a thing of the past. With my successor elected I’m preparing for a nice retirement semester, watching as the band that has given me so much grows even more. To that end, I want to say thank you to all of the people who have helped me along the way, and I hope you continue to enjoy and support the Pep Band!
Go Red!
Tommy ‘26
Hey Everyone!
Our names are Pidge and Jonathan and we were your Pep Band’s conductors for the Fall 2025 semester! We have been so lucky to attend events all around campus inspiring school spirit, while also keeping up some of our really amazing traditions and spending time with the people in our little Pep Band family. We’ve been able to support our incredible fall sport teams throughout their normal seasons and even into some playoff runs! We were able to be in the 1st round of the Men’s Soccer NCAA tournament and we got to celebrate a Big Red Win! We are also so proud of our Sprint Football team for winning the Ivy League this year!
Our men’s hockey team has been off to a fantastic start with an 6-3-0 overall record and a 5-1-0 conference record as we write this. The home games that we have been able to attend have been super exciting and we recently got to support the team at MSG for Red Hot Hockey (we were so happy to see all the alumni who were able to come out!) Our women’s team has also had a fantastic season so far with an overall 10-3-1 overall record and a 6-2-0 conference record. This semester we were able to go on our first ever regular season Women’s hockey away trip!
Rehearsals this semester have been super fun as well. We’ve been looking through our folder and removing some songs while also adding some other fantastic student arrangements! We’ve even been able to bring back some cheer sheets that we don’t play as much anymore (Here’s to Scrivens!).
It has been amazing to meet all of the new members and see all of the fun adventures that the band has gotten up to! We are so excited for our new Conductors to continue building the Pep Band spirit!
Peace and Screw BU,
Pidge “wait but the script says…” Sherlock
Jonathan “nah let’s just play” Miller
