When people think of big bands, they might hearken back to the Golden Age of Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman and the Dorseys.

And when it comes to Jazz 4 Nothin’, a truly big band of about 18 players, they’d be right. The big band big names are part of their repertoire, as are Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and the more recent Maynard Ferguson and Buddy Rich.

But if you think that’s all there is to know about big band music, you’re a bit out of tune with the potential of this American musical art form.

So says Andrew MacNamee, director of Jazz 4 Nothin’, a nonprofit, all-volunteer labor of love based in Central Bucks County, and on the bill for the Wednesday, July 1, installment of the Pastorius Park concert series presented by the Chestnut Hill Community Association and sponsored by Temple Health-Chestnut Hill Hospital.

“We do try and present a good spread of eras in what we play,” MacNamee says. “We’ve played music that was written in the 1920s all the way through the 2020s. We definitely play Count Basie the most. Ellington’s another we play a lot of. In the set we’re planning for this upcoming [Pastorius] concert, you’ll hear some Maynard Ferguson. There will also be more modern band leaders, like Gordon Goodwin, who’s one of our favorites. And every once in a while, one of our own players composes and arranges, and we’ll throw in originals from him. We play a lot of music that was written arranged in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, but we do make an effort to get some music from the 2000s as well.”

Jazz 4 Nothin’ plays six to 10 performance a year, said MacNamee, who plays trombone in the band. Many of them really are “4 nothin’,” including gigs for appreciative retirement home audiences. Some performances, such as the concert in Pastorius Park, are paying jobs, but the proceeds go to support the band’s efforts, including intellectual property rights for the tunes, and practice hall rental.

The band repertoire is designed to satisfy audience tastes, but also those of the band’s members. Some audience members not accustomed to big bands find themselves drawn to it as the performance goes on.

“It’s not a style of music people are going out of their way to hear, but playing it live can be really engaging, especially if it’s the right setting,” MacNamee said. “A lot more people connect to big band music than they might think. A lot of the tunes we play are songs that are familiar and people might not have heard them as big band arrangements. So, we can play a song they might know, like they heard it on TV, so it’s a familiar theme. We play songs that were maybe made famous by Frank Sinatra.” (The band has a vocalist.)

“I think people can connect with it a lot more than they think, and we also try to show that we’re having fun on stage – because we are. I think that goes a long way toward connecting with an audience.”

The band, which gets together every Wednesday night at the BuxMont Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Warrington, formed in 2010. Members – in their 40s to 70s – are drawn to big band tunes for several reasons, MacNamee said. Many high schools teach big bands because you can put 20 kids in the same band and they can play jazz. After high school there aren’t many opportunities to continue to play big band tunes, if at all, so Jazz 4 Nothin’ gives amateur musicians a way to jam to those tunes again.

“There’s some nostalgia involved,” MacNamee said. “Like, we all played this music in high school and fell in love with it. We’ve had people in the band who have backgrounds like music educators or semi-professional musicians, but big band is not always an outlet you get to perform in. For everybody, it’s a treat to play this music. It’s fun to be in a large group like this and perform this music.”

Ultimately, playing big band music is a blast – literally.

“You get a lot of sound,” says MacNamee. “I think it’s very satisfying to make a lot of noise with my instrument along with other people. It can get very loud and exciting.”

The concert starts at 7:30 and it’s free. The Chestnut Hill Business District is sponsoring this show. Pastorius Park is at 8117 Roanoke St.