CHUCK'S LAST JAM to Celebrate Chuck Miller's Retirement at Town Hall Theater This Month

A fixture of Middlebury’s music scene for more than 25 years, pianist Chuck Miller is retiring to Florida — so a number of eminent Vermont jazz players and vocalists will join him at the local Town Hall Theater on Thursday, Aug. 31, for a performance that’s billed as “Chuck’s Last Jam.”

“This is kind of the end of an era,” said Doug Anderson, the Town Hall Theater’s founder and artistic director. “Chuck has been part of so many events here at the theater. He’s been a cornerstone of THT since our earliest days.”

True to the jazz approach, the Aug. 31 show will be mostly improvised — “a jam with my friends,” said Miller, who taught music at Middlebury’s Mary Hogan Elementary School for 26 years before stepping down in 2016.

Miller has many musical friends, having played with and accompanied some of Vermont’s best. Among those set to join him on the theater stage are vocalists Francois Clemmons, Vanessa Dunleavy and Jillian Torres, along with trombonist Bear Irwin, bassist and trumpeter Glendon Ingalls, drummer Felix Anderson, and reed players Chris Peterman and Rich Davidian, director of the Vermont Jazz Ensemble.

“Chuck is one of the most creative minds that I know,” said Ingalls. “We have played together hundreds of times over the last 21 years. He seldom plays a song the same way twice.”

Miller is something of a legend in Middlebury. Along with arranging the music for a number of shows at the theater and accompanying musicals there and elsewhere, he played piano every second Sunday for two decades at the local Champlain Valley Unitarian Universalist Society. At the end of each service, he would play a piano composition that he improvised on the spot.

“I was totally influenced by him,” said fellow pianist Kate Gridley, who alternated Sundays with Miller at the Unitarian church. “He really added something special.”

The theater will open its doors at 6:30 p.m. on Aug. 31 for “Chuck’s Last Jam,” with the show set to start at 7 p.m.

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