Over the last eight years, the Brookline Community Band has undergone a transformation led by Chi-Sun Chan, a tuba player and band conductor who has performed around the world.
When Chan took over as its conductor in 2017, the community band was a 20-piece group that performed by request at senior homes and community events. Musicians would often join for a year or two while in graduate school or research programs, then leave when they moved to their next chapters in life.
From the start, Chan knew he wanted to grow. He introduced auditions, scheduled a concert series of four seasonal shows with different themes and hand-selected music, and opted for arrangements instead of the traditional marches the band had been playing.
He challenged the players with new music, choosing some of the most difficult pieces in the five-level difficulty scale used for band and orchestra music. And under his leadership, the band has grown to 60 members.
“I try to push their limits,” Chan told Brookine.News. “It’s worth it to give them a try. I think they make a lot of progress, and they improve a lot.”
Mary McConnell, who joined the band in 2005 as a percussionist, said Chan’s programming has strengthened her skills — and encouraged her to practice more frequently.
“I was nervous because I thought, ‘I don’t know whether I can keep up with this challenging music,’” she said, “but we can all keep up with it just fine, and it makes us stronger musicians.”
Chan, 55, moved to Boston from Hong Kong in 1993 to study music at the Boston Conservatory. He went on to earn a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in brass performance from Boston University. He has directed the Greater Boston Chinese Cultural Association’s Chinese music ensemble since 2002, and he founded the Boston Synchrony Chinese Percussion Ensemble in 2012.
Chan has also given guest lectures on Chinese music at several universities, including Harvard. His wife, who is from Taiwan, is also a musician and specializes in Chinese instruments. The two have lived in Cambridge for more than a decade.
The Brookline Community Band is a “totally brand new experience” because it is the first all-adult band he has ever directed, Chan said. He has enjoyed learning the nuances of teaching adults, and strives to challenge them with diverse and engaging music, Chan said.
Chan’s directing style has created a “safe” environment for all musicians, McConnell said.
“It’s not an easy thing to conduct a band with so much variety of abilities, ages and skills, and he does that with a lot of grace and a lot of support,” she said.
For John Bassett, a cornet player who has been part of the Brookline Community Band since the 1980s, Chan’s direction has been both a guiding force and a source of improvement for the band.
“He’s a really good musician who knows how he wants the music to sound,” Bassett said. “He studies the score, he knows the music, he listens to other groups play it, and he has a real idea of what he wants and he communicates it well.”
One of Chan’s favorite memories with the band was a spring concert of French and Spanish music. The theme was inspired by a Spanish couple who had joined the band while living in Brookline for a brief stint, Chan said. They introduced Chan to traditional Spanish band music and helped him find the right pieces for the performance, he said.
“It was very refreshing,” Chan said.
The Brookline Community Band’s next concert is themed Dancing Around the World and will feature Latin American, Chinese, Malaysian and Jewish music, Chan said. It is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on March 12 at the Florida Ruffin Ridley School.
