And the band played on

Baldwinsville Community Band celebrates 40 years

By Ashley M. Casey

Associate Editor

The Baldwinsville Community Band is shown here performing at the Lake George Community Band Festival in July 2009 where the band played for several summers.

When Phill Sterling was a music teacher at Durgee Junior High School, one of his young students asked what he could do with his musical career after high school.

“I didn’t have an answer for him, and he didn’t sign up for band the next year,” Sterling recalled.

Determined not to let the Bees’ musical talents go to waste, Sterling decided to found the Baldwinsville Community Band in December 1979.

“I knew there were several community bands in the area, and I had conducted one in Liverpool a couple of summers prior,” he said.

The band, made up of amateur musicians of all ages, played its first concert March 4, 1980.

“[It] is the only day of the year that’s a command — ‘march forth,’” Sterling said.

Over the past 40 years, hundreds of musicians — many of them Sterling’s former students — have passed through the Baldwinsville Community Band.

“It’s rewarding to me to see that I didn’t have a job just for a paycheck — it’s meaningful,” Sterling said.

Several of the band’s members play in two or more groups. Some of them have gone on to start their own bands elsewhere.

“One gentleman moved down to Kentucky and started a community band there,” Sterling said.

In the early days of the group, Sterling and his fellow players agreed on the key to success: “Let’s not get too serious with it.”

Sterling chooses a variety of tunes for the band’s repertoire from marches to popular material — the band is working on songs from the Disney/Pixar movie “Up!” — to heavier classical pieces.

“I try to program things that the band enjoys and that our audience enjoys,” Sterling said. “Nothing so highbrow that people would be falling asleep, I hope.”

The band’s musical library contains 500 numbers. Some members prefer more challenging material, and others have bowed out because of certain songs’ rigor. Sometimes, Sterling rewrites sections to suit skill level and attendance — say, switching a French horn part to saxophones if there aren’t enough brass players.

Sterling is flexible if a player is unable to perform in all of the 10 or so concerts the band puts on each year.

“Just let me know if you can’t make it. It’s not high school; you don’t need a note,” he said.

Longtime Baldwinsville Community Band member Sue Slenker is shown performing at the CNY Veterans Parade and Expo, held Nov. 9 at the New York State Fairgrounds. The band has played at this event for 12 years since it was moved to the fairgrounds.

In its four decades of existence, the Baldwinsville Community Band has played for the CNY Veterans Parade and Expo, Baldwinsville Oktoberfest, and at Chevy Court at the New York State Fair. The band is a regular fixture at Baldwinsville venues such as Canton Woods Senior Center and local churches such as St. Augustine’s, St. Mary’s and recently Grace Episcopal Church.

“At St. Mary’s, we play right up in the altar area and the sound is just majestic when it resonates,” Sterling said.

One of Sterling’s former students is associate conductor of the band, and many of his students have children old enough to play as well.

“I want to make sure we have a clear path forward for the next 40 years,” he said.