‘We’ve made some beautiful music’: Grand finale for longtime conductor of the Lisle Community Band

It’s a perfect choice for a swan song.

“Remember me, though I have to say goodbye,” begins the Academy Award-winning song from the movie, “Coco.” The tune is planned as part of the Lisle Community Band’s Thursday, July 16, program at the Lisle Park District Band Shell, 1825 Short St.

The Concerts in the Park season finale will be the last time at the podium for Lisle Community Band founder and conductor Steve Green, retiring after 40 years.

“Don’t let it make you cry,” goes the song, “Remember Me.”

Yet when reflecting on the countless musicians he has worked with since forming the group in 1987, and now the finality, Green can’t help but get choked up.

“As far as the emotions, there’s going to be some melancholy, a little bit of sadness that the era’s ended, because these people are,” said Green, who then paused briefly before saying, “family.”

They “really care” he added. “And we’ve made some beautiful music over the years. So I’m going to miss that.”

‘Not a closed group’

The Lisle Community Band is a success story shared this season by 85 musicians representing 13 instrument groups in woodwind, brass, and percussion, from high school students to seniors.

There are no auditions, and parts are available to everyone, from skilled soloists to the rusty.

“It’s not a closed group,” said Nicholas Relstab, a nine-year band member who also serves on the Lisle Community Band board. “It’s open to anybody, different walks of life.”

“There’s lawyers, schoolteachers, music educators, IT professionals. There’s a physicist,” said Relstab, a computer network engineer who adds to the band’s deep clarinet section.

The band’s popularity has reached the point where limits have been established for each instrument section, with additional registrants placed on a wait list. There’s simply no more room onstage at the band shell or in the rehearsal space at Lisle High School, where Green served as band director from 1981 to 2011.

So yes, as far as emotions go, on Thursday, “He’s going to be a hot mess at the end of that concert,” said Amy McLear, one of Steve and Robin Green’s two daughters.

“My dad loves this group,” McLear said. “He’s put his heart and soul into this group, and it just has grown and flourished under his direction.”

A nurse who lives three blocks from her parents in Warrenville, McLear had the inside scoop that this would be her father’s last year leading the band. She surprised him by returning to play the clarinet — like her mother — for the first time since graduating from college two decades ago.

McLear brings her son, Evan, a trumpeter entering his freshman year at Wheaton Warrenville South High School. Having three generations of the same family onstage is not unusual. It’s common to have two generations.

For years, McLear’s younger sister, Laura Wilga, played percussion in the band. Now living in Davenport, Iowa, she’s driven to Lisle for each of her father’s last concerts.

Bringing an idea to life

Early in his 30-year career at Lisle High School, thoughts of creating a summer music program spurred Green to start the Lisle Community Band, combining residents, high school and college musicians who wanted to stay sharp, and adults who had played in their youth and missed it, or sought to perform alongside their children.

“The idea really was to provide an ensemble where adult musicians could return to performing,” Green said. “That’s still a big part of our mission.”

In 38 years of Concerts in the Park, with 1987 focused on organization and one year lost to the COVID-19 pandemic, Green has missed exactly one performance.

“Probably some family thing,” said Green, 70, who met his wife when both were studying music education at Western Illinois University. Robin Green, also retired, taught at West Aurora High School before becoming an elementary school teacher and band director in Naperville Unit District 203.

The band’s July 2 concert was a heartwarming example of Green’s impact.

Moved from the band shell to the Lisle High School auditorium because of the heat, area VFW members presented the colors before Green led a resounding rendition of the national anthem — crisp, muscular, big swell at the end. Right on the money.

Current and former Lisle High School students were there to support 2026 graduate Anya Kutkoski on trumpet, while Green later acknowledged tuba player Gary Robbins, 80, one of the band’s original members and its first board president.

“He should be recognized,” Green told the crowd. “He helped me get this thing going.”

At intermission, band members and Green himself mingled with family and friends in the nearly filled auditorium and lobby.

Passing the baton

Periodically during the July 2 performance, associate conductor Dan Schraub, band director at Lisle Junior High School, left his trombone to lead the band.

Schraub will take over as conductor, a commitment that helped urge Green’s retirement after a landmark 40 years — “on my terms and on a very positive note,” Green said.

It’s a bittersweet denouement for sure. But Green and his wife will soon have summer free to visit their four grandchildren, to do the traveling for which there was never time.

Proud of what he’s built, pleased with the Lisle Community Band’s leadership and direction, Steve Green is ready to pass the baton.

“I feel good about the state in which I’m leaving it,” he said.