Eli Marchand, Music

Why Porter

“I could hear the pep band from my bedroom on game days. That's not a metaphor, my house is on Third Street. Every kid in Founders Triangle grows up thinking of the university as the place with the good sledding hill. I never pictured myself going here until my high school band director took us to a Wind Symphony concert and I realized two of the trumpets were engineers.”

Eli is a sophomore in Music, which at Porter pairs theory and performance with recording and production. He is the first in his family to attend a four-year school, and the Hometown Porter Falls Scholarship covers a large share of his tuition. He lives at home. “My mom says I'm a commuter. I say I live in the commuter-est possible way: I walk.”

The hands-on part

Music majors must perform in an ensemble every term. Eli plays in two: second trumpet in the Wind Symphony and lead trumpet in the Ironclad Pep Band.

• Wind Symphony: rehearsals Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 4 p.m. The Fall Choral & Wind Concert is this Sunday, October 11, in Heritage Auditorium. “The engineers in the section bring the best snacks and the worst puns.”
• Pep band: every home football game, in the north stands, including the Forge Bowl on October 17. “Forge Bowl is the only day of the year my grandma comes to a football game. She comes for the band.”
• The studio: in MUS 2500, Introduction to Music Technology, he learned to mic a brass section in the audio recording studio. This year he is on the student crew recording the choir for the department archive.

The full concert calendar is on the 2026–27 arts season page. Porter students get in free with a Porter Card. “Please come. The Heritage balcony is very lonely.”

A hard semester

“Freshman fall I tried to do everything. Two ensembles, a full load, twenty-two hours a week at the diner on Main Street and the farmers market on Saturdays. I failed Music Theory I. Not barely. Properly.

“My adviser didn't lecture me. She just put my week on a whiteboard, hour by hour, and asked where theory was supposed to fit. There was no hour. I cut the diner to twelve hours, kept the market because the tips are good and I like the cheese guy, and retook theory in spring. B-plus. I now do theory homework at the Depot District coffee shop before the market opens.”

He also learned to use the Tutoring & Learning Center, which has a music theory tutor on Wednesday nights. “She's a senior who plays horn. She explained voice leading with a pizza. I can't tell you how, but I passed.”

Being from here

“People from out of town think Porter Falls is a college with a town attached. When you grow up here you know it's the other way around. My neighbor has driven the Porter Loop shuttle for nine years. My middle school science teacher went here. During Millrace Week, half the parade is people I know.”

He also sits in with the Porter Falls Community Band in summer, “where I am the youngest person by about thirty years and they make sure I know it.”

What’s next

This year he is also learning the business side. He works six hours a week on the department's recording crew, which pays, and he has started booking a brass quintet for weddings and the Depot Plaza holiday market. “Five musicians, one minivan, a lot of Pachelbel. We charge less than a DJ and we're louder.” The quintet rehearses in an Applied Arts practice room on Sunday afternoons, and he keeps the books in a spreadsheet he admits he learned to build from a business major in the pep band.

Eli is thinking about adding a minor in video production and working in live sound or broadcast audio. “Or I'll teach high school band. Either way I'm going to be the guy who knows where the extension cords are.”