Gabriel Weber
Staff Writer
The Chautauqua Community Band performs at 12:15 p.m. today on Bestor Plaza under Director Aidan Chamberlain’s baton with the usual suspects — though any Chautauquan who can hold and successfully play an instrument is invited to join.
Though Chamberlain chose the pieces in the program for the band’s annual Old First Night concert celebrating Chautauqua’s birthday, the decisions truly hinged on drummer Gary Miller, due to the difficulty of the drum components in specific pieces — though Miller is authorized to improvise. Musicians will play showtunes from musicals like The Lion King and Wicked, along with classics like John Philip Sousa’s “The Washington Post March” — which kids from the Children’s School will be conducting — and George Cohan’s “Cohan Salute,” plus many more.
“It’s truly an incredible challenge for me,” Miller said. “There’s a couple places where I can listen to most any complicated kit beat and duplicate it, but when it’s written, my brain is melting. I decode what it is and kind of play it in my brain a couple times.”
After Chamberlain assumed his position as director in 2023 after the passing of beloved founder and director Jason Weintraub, he extended the group’s singular rehearsal from one hour to an hour and 30 minutes.
“I quite like a bit of adrenaline with just the one rehearsal,” Chamberlain said “It’s like having a strong coffee.”
While this is his first year with the Community Band, Miller started playing drums when he was about 7 years old when his parents noticed he was fidgeting and hammering things quite a bit. Miller played the drums until 2019 with a three-piece rock and blues band, but hadn’t read music since his early 20s.
“Relearning and getting my brain to learn all that has been really difficult,” Miller said.
Miller and his wife, Kriss Young Miller, come back to Chautauqua every year to manage the Quaker House. He initially joined Thursday Morning Brass, of which Chamberlain is also music director, and got roped into the “conspiracy” of Community Band by his tuba player sister-in-law.
Chamberlain and Miller got to play music at Children’s School last week and do pop-up music on the corner of Bestor Plaza every weekday, as well.
“Just playing music brings me joy from the inside out, and I’m doing every piece of it I can work into my life. I’m kind of on a tapering path to retire in a year or two, and it’s really clear that I just want to keep playing more music when I can,” Miller said. “It’s the best, and it was a great honor to be asked to join these groups. Truly an honor, I’m just delighted to be a part of it.”
Saxophonist David Lee hails from South Africa, switching from piano to saxophone in high school and then going straight into the Navy with the South African National Defence Force where he joined the band for basic training. In a bit of a full-circle moment, when he auditioned for the official South African Navy Band and was summoned to the commander’s office, he was surprised to reconnect with his high school band director.
As Lee joined the Community Band in 2008, and he remembers when the youngest (and smallest) musicians could barely hold their instruments up — and now they’re incredible, he said. Lee specifically finds the band a great way to keep his musical chops going because playing was something that he never wanted to let go of.
“The second year that I came (to Chautauqua), we were here over the Fourth of July and on Bestor Plaza, so we came to listen to the Community Band play. I was like, ‘Wow, this kind of sounds like my old school orchestra,’ ” Lee said. “The following year, I brought my saxophone out, and I started playing with the Community Band; it was like just going back to that big community — I never looked back.”
Lee is also an actor, featured in and co-writer of the Oscar-nominated short film “The Last Ranger,” which will be shown at 5:30 p.m. today in the Chautauqua Cinema; it details the effects of rhino poaching and conservation efforts. Academy Award-nominated composer John Powell scored the film when he got a week off from Wicked.
Playing music keeps Lee’s brain engaged in a specific and heartwarming way, however.
“The feeling of playing with musicians who love what they’re doing and are there for the love of it, every year, it’s like memorabilia. (Community Band) is something that you see or hear that you just love time and time again — it’s great being a part of history,” Lee said. “This Community Band is such a central part of Fourth of July and Old First Night, and it brings so many people together.”
Chamberlain remembers attending a jazz workshop in New York City and the people who showed up spoke different languages. The shared understanding through musicality fosters unity where language fails.
“It’s like speaking a language together,” Chamberlain said, “which is really an interesting way to communicate and have an experience with other people.”
