Glenn Miller Orchestra brings nostalgic sounds to the Oncenter

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The first sweeping notes of “Moonlight Serenade” flooded the theater as blue velvet curtains opened to reveal the Glenn Miller Orchestra, starting off with the band’s signature song.

The orchestra, which has been touring across the U.S. and around the world for the past 70 years, stopped in Syracuse on Monday night to play for a crowd eager to spend the evening at the Oncenter revisiting the big band era. Erik Stabnau, the music director, said the band’s been playing ever since Glenn Miller himself led the orchestra in the 1930s and ’40s.

The orchestra performed classic hits like “String of Pearls,” “Chatanooga Choo Choo” and “Moonlight Cocktail,” and featured the Moonlight Serenaders, a vocal group made up of members of the orchestra and vocalist Jenny Swoish.

“This band is like the sound and the epitome of 1940s swing music,” Stabnau said. “And Glenn Miller was almost without a doubt the most popular bandleader during his tenure.”

The band looked and sounded like it came out of the 1940s, from the distinct brassy sound of the muted trombones to the red and white caps the musicians synchronously flaunted on stage.

In addition to leading the orchestra, Stabnau also plays the saxophone and sings in the band. He said that another characterization of the Glenn Miller Orchestra in particular is the reed instruments — the saxophones and clarinets — leading most of the melodies.

“That’s sort of the famous sound of the Glenn Miller Orchestra,” Stabnau said. “A lot of people are familiar with the original recordings from the ‘30s and ‘40s, and I want audiences to walk into our shows and hear that exact same sound. … I want us to be able to replicate and do justice to that original band.”

This famous sound got toes tapping and knees bouncing, and the audience was in the mood for more of Glenn Miller’s hits. Dorothy Terry, whose daughters bought her tickets to the orchestra as her 94th birthday present, was clapping along to most of the tunes.

Jenny Swoish, the vocalist for the Glenn Miller Orchestra, conducts the end of the song after finishing her solo. Swoish performed in the night’s music as both a soloist and a member of the Moonlight Serenaders, a vocal group made up of herself and members of the orchestra. Emily Steinberger | Senior Staff Photographer

“This is the kind of music we danced to years ago at Drumlins,” Terry said. “They used to have dancing every Saturday night with an orchestra. … That was where I always went if I had a date on Saturday night.”

Alice Combs said she’s never seen the Glenn Miller Orchestra perform before, but she has always wanted to. Her daughter, too, bought her tickets as an early Mother’s Day present.
“Last week, we saw the Glenn Miller band movie on TV, and we didn’t realize the story behind it, because it’s pretty fascinating,” said Combs’ daughter, Linda Wright. “Mom was like ‘I would love to see them sometime,’ and I looked and they just happened to be in Syracuse.”

Though Miller formed his orchestra about 80 years ago, some audience members had more recent connections to the band. Robin Hamblin said that she grew up in a family of musicians, and her grandfather, grandmother and father all played in big bands.

“Even though it was the ’70s, for me growing up, it was Glenn Miller and all the greats,” Hamblin said. “This is the music of my childhood.”

Stabnau, who joined the orchestra in 2017, also grew up listening to big band music, but his connection with this particular audience spanned beyond their shared love of Miller’s music. He grew up in Rochester, he said, and earned his masters degree at Syracuse University.

He said he felt the nostalgia of being back in his old stomping ground, a nostalgia echoed in the lyrics of the song “Stepping Out with a Memory Tonight,” which the band played during the night’s performance.

Before the song “I’m Old Fashioned,” Stabnau recalled some of the “old fashioned” things from the past, like when the JMA Wireless Dome was officially called the Carrier Dome and when Jim Boeheim was still the coach of the basketball team.

By the end of the night, the musicians flipped back through the yellowing scores of music to the first song they played, and they ended the night the same way they started, with “Moonlight Serenade.” A final encore elicited by the audience resulted in the band playing “Pennsylvania 6500,” with the one condition — that the audience sang along. The audience didn’t seem to mind.

“I just want it to be a fun show,” Stabnau said. “I hope every audience member comes in and leaves and had a great time.”

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