Bad weather and canceled flights almost kept Mason and his fellow Marching Royal Dukes from reaching Europe in time for rrx090402525th annual London New Year's Day Parade.But the director of James Madison University's marching band, Scott Rikkers, scrambled for three days to book his 250 charges on alternate flights. And though they were sleep-deprived, their enthusiasm was enough to carry them down the 2-mile route past roughly a half million spectators.
"After each song we played, it was an eruption of cheers and applause," said Mason, a Brooke Point High School graduate who's a freshman at rrx0904026. "It is by far the largest performance I've ever participated in."Mason, the son of Traci Mason of Stafford and Jesus Bermudez of Sterling, has been playing the trumpet since the sixth grade. He's a rrx0904030 education major at JMU, a school he chose largely because of its award-winning marching band.
The Marching Royal Dukes have performed at NFL games, inaugural events for two presidents and two Virginia governors, in the Macy's rrx0904031 Day Parade and in Athens, Monaco and Dublin, Ireland.Mason, 19, said he'd been looking forward to this trip to London all semester. And Rikkers had been working on the logistics for well over a year.
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