On the cold snowy day of Tuesday 11, 2025 to help celebrate Veterans Day the Chittenango dixieland band went to the War Memorial in Syracuse to play for the veterans and local politicians in attendance. The bus was loaded with all of the music equipment and left the high school around 5:20. After reaching the War Memorial, the bus was unloaded, and the equipment was set up in between some of the exhibits. After setting up the band started to play their music. In total eleven songs were played, and during the whole experience everyone enjoyed the music and made everlasting memories.

This year the dixieland band was faced with a tough challenge, because the entire rhythm section was new due to the former members graduating last year. That means that there were new drum, piano, and tuba/bass players this year. The dixieland band was able to successfully overcome this challenge during the past few months and played another great performance.

Mr. Velardi has been the band director for dixieland band for 19-20 years now. Mr. Velardi didn’t know much about dixieland music when he first arrived at Chittenango High School. In fact he said, “when I got this job and I didn’t have this much exposure for this style of music, I have just grown to appreciate this music.” Now he knows quite a lot about dixieland style, rhythm, and music.

This year 12 dixieland band students performed at the war memorial. Sadi Jones and Natile DiGennaro played the clarinet, Dan Byrne played the tenor sax, Elijah Lefort and Danica Oppenheimer played the trombone, Natile Chapman, Lilian Keville, Sean Navin, and Alex Scheidleman played the trumpet, Jaymes Ronalds played the tuba, and Tommy Keville played the drums. All of these students did a fantastic job and definitely made everyone’s day.