The Cavalier Marching Band (CMB) is the marching band at the University of Virginia. The band's original director, William "Bill" Pease, was the first full-time marching band director in the history of the University of Virginia. The Cavalier Marching Band made its debut on September 11, 2004, after a considerable donation was made by University of Virginia benefactors Carl and Hunter Smith to found the band in 2003. The CMB uses a mixture of both DCI style glide step and high step in its performances. Of its over three hundred members, all seven undergraduate schools at the University of Virginia are represented. The band performs a traditional pregame show prior to the start of football games, which usually features school songs such as "The Cavalier Song" and "Virginia Hail, All Hail". The band also performs during halftime, with a wider variety of music ranging from Broadway show tunes to top-40 hits. Following home games, selections from halftime are often repeated in a postgame show for the remaining fans in Scott Stadium. The Cavalier Marching Band was selected to march in the 2015 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. More than 44 million viewers watch the parade each year since its first television broadcast in 1939. In addition, the band has performed at a number of bowl games including the 2011 Chick-fil-A Bowl, the 2017 Military Bowl, the 2018 Belk Bowl, and the 2019 Orange Bowl. The CMB was also featured in the 2009 film Marching Band, a documentary directed by French filmmaker Claude Miller. The Cavalier Marching Band is assisted by the Beta Chi chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi and the Iota Kappa chapter of Tau Beta Sigma. History In the years leading up to the formation of the Cavalier Marching Band, the University of Virginia had become the last remaining program in the Atlantic Coast Conference without a conventional marching band. In the wake of the 2002 Continental Tire Bowl and the banning of the Virginia Pep Band from all future editions of that ACC-tied bowl game, a donation was made by Hunter Smith for the establishment of an official university marching band. The director of the Pep Band at the time, Adam Lorentson, said that cost was the key reason the university did not have a traditional marching band, while Smith's multimillion-dollar donation made the new marching band a reality. One of Bill Pease's first moves