The Tulane marching band disbanded a few years after Green Wave football abandoned old Tulane Stadium and moved to the Superdome for its games. The program laid dormant for decades before Tulane president Scott Cowen was guided to make a commitment: if sports was to be an emphasis in Uptown New Orleans, the entire gameday experience needed to be emphasized. In 2004, Barry Spanier was hired to resuscitate a program that had not had a musician in decades. Spanier had a pretty impressive resume: he had a wealth of experience developing musical ensembles from the ground up; he produced music for Olympic ceremonies, even heading up music for World Expositions; he served as associate director of the famed University of Southern California (USC) Trojan Marching Band, and created orchestras and bands at New York University and abroad. For World Expo 88 in Brisbane, Australia, he designed and directed a marching band program in an environment that previously had no such tradition. For the Sydney Olympics in the year
