Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School Band, (commonly abbreviated to Kyoto Tachibana S.H.S. Band). They are fondly nicknamed as “Orange Devils” due to their trademark full-orange uniform and habit of winning band competitions. Kyoto Tachibana High School Concert Band was founded by legendary Professor Hisashi Hiramatsu (1935-2021) in 1961 with 16 members. With the intent of improving the girls’ health it soon evolved to one of the oldest female Marching Bands in Japan.
Band is formed out of students of the school Wind Music Club and has usually around 100 members from which typically only handful are boys. Wind Club activities are traditionally preferred by girls in Japan (boys tend to go to baseball or soccer clubs). They train before and after school hours as well as in weekends, holidays included, and are regular participant in All-Japan Marching Contest (5 National Gold Awards in 2008, 2009, 2015, 2021 and 2022, 3 National Silver Awards in 2007, 2011, 2014).
Their first overseas trip took place in 1975 to Harrogate in Yorkshire, and later the band has visited Hawai’i every three years from 1981 (first to Maui and from 1998 to Kaua’i) to 2016. They participated in the 123rd Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena, California in 2012 and in the 129th Tournament of Roses Parade in 2018. In 2022 they were invited to Taiwan to play at the National Day Ceremonies as the first foreign performer in these celebrities.
Due to their fame the band has also been invited to participate in several wider-scale entertainment projects. They played as the background band for the promotional song of the 100th Summer Kōshien (Japanese High School Baseball Championship) in 2018, they collaborated with J-Pop singer Kalen Anzai at her music video in 2019, and they played at the soundtrack of the anime movie “Belle” in 2021.
The music the band plays is almost entirely Western, starting from gospel and big band era classics, and ending to evergreen pop songs and recent chart hits with heavy dose of Disney tunes interspersed. Music is chosen bearing in mind the expected preferences of the audience and how easy it is to adapt to the band dancing style. The regular parade program is about 15 minutes long and if needed it will be rolled over. The trademark song of the band which is practically always part of the program is “Sing, SIng, Sing (With a Swing)” made famous by Benny Goodmann in 1937. This wild dance is sometimes performed in parades as a standstill number but usually it is the last song (or encore) of any stage/field show and ends with traditional “Tachibana Plow” -formation and “Ey!”-shout.
